Although the term was coined in the early 1960s to describe traffic jams in Philadelphia the day after Thanksgiving, and has become depicted in recent years by hordes of unruly mall-customers, Black Friday has a more fateful and historic connotation in Australia. This due to their Black Friday fires in 1939, where on January 13th [a Friday no less], a total of 69 sawmills were burned and 71 lives lost.

In Forestry News, new advances in Christmas tree innovation could help economic growth in Nova Scotia, notably a balsam fir that would retain needles for up to three months; the hullabaloo over logging and caribou in Northern Ontario continues to intensify; a draft agreement to support caribou recovery in BC has been reached; and a former Maine commissioner speaks out on forests, jobs and excessive CO2.

Finally, a Swedish power plant is using clothing discarded from H&M rather than coal and oil as part of its strategy to go fossil-fuel free by 2020. According to Johanna Dahl, “H&M does not burn any clothes that are safe to use”.

— Kelly McCloskey, Tree Frog Editor