The City of Regina destroyed three trees infected with Dutch Elm Disease so far this summer. The elms were in the Wood Meadows neighbourhood in Regina’s east end. The infected trees were all within a block of each other. Russel Eirich, the manager of forestry, pest control and horticulture for the City of Regina, says the disease was…
Re: “Forestry workers, environmentalists call for ban on log exports,” July 22. It is important that the voice of B.C. forest workers who actually log and work in sawmills is heard. With respect to the organization quoted, the United Steelworkers represents loggers and the majority of unionized sawmill workers in B.C. USW has long advocated…
A helicopter has been dumping water on hot spots Sunday morning as flare-ups from the fire have been occurring. The evacuation order put in place for the Okanagan Landing wildfire Saturday night for about 60 residents of Adventure Bay was rescinded Sunday morning. Fire broke out sometime after 8:30 p.m. Saturday on a hill near…
During the summer of 2015, it seemed there were reports every week of wildfires burning in the province or warnings about how to prevent them. So far, the summer of 2016 has been cooler and less smokey, but that could begin to change as hot weather has arrived throughout much of the province and wildfire danger is again creeping…
A Brink Forest Products Ltd. employee who was seriously injured while preparing to change the knife assemblies on a wood waste chipper was carrying out the work while the machine was still moving, according to a WorkSafeBC incident investigation report. The report, which stems from a November 2014 incident, said the worker was on the…
As the mountain pine beetle season gets into full swing, researchers at the University of Calgary are trying to figure out what makes the insect tick. The current mountain pine beetle outbreak started in British Columbia in the early 1990s and crossed into Alberta in 2006 causing serious impact on commercial lodgepole pine. Recently, the…
A resurgence in American housing starts will help position Prince George at the head of the country’s class of mid-sized cities in terms of future growth, according to the Conference Board of Canada. However, the city’s mayor says the region is striving to diversify from its reliance on forestry. The Conference Board of Canada’s Mid-Sized…
Prince George will see the strongest economic growth among the seven mid-sized cities covered in a Conference Board of Canada outlook. Following growth of 2.6 per cent last year, Prince George’s economy is forecast to make further gains over the next two years, with real GDP rising by 2.4 per cent this year and 2.8…
The shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy is occurring mainly at the power plant level. But what about transportation? Can we significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions by switching to cleaner fuels? Or is this just an attempt to keep 20th century technology chugging along while trading one set of environmental problems for another? Biofuels…
Hundreds of insect traps have been set up around Edmonton so city pest management staff can monitor any threat to the city’s urban forest. “About half of our street trees are green ash and the other half are American elm so between the two of them there’s a lot of vulnerability there,” said Mike Jenkins,…