British Columbia industry experts are looking to innovation in materials and methods to push the province forward. Construction consultant Helen Goodland led a seminar at the Vancouver Regional Construction Association’s recent Construction Leadership Forum in Whistler, B.C. She was joined by Craig Mitchell of Britco LP and Sean Kennedy of Equilibrium Consulting to dive into…
Whipped up by wind and fuelled by tinder dry conditions, the wildfire in Fort McMurray, Alta., grew to about 1,000 square kilometres on Friday. An expert said it’s a dangerous fire because of its location, not necessarily because of its size. “Let’s put this into perspective. That is a high-priority area,” said Marc Mousseau of…
The province’s chief forester has elected to smooth out the annual allowable cut in the Kamloops timber supply area by dropping it more rapidly than an earlier proposed base case. Diane Nicholls, chief forester, said the beetle epidemic in the region and salvage efforts in its wake are over, leaving far less timber availability. The…
Canadian forestry company executives are eager for a new softwood lumber agreement but say they are not interest in a rumoured U.S. proposal to reinstate across-the-board quotas. Resolute Forest Products chief executive Richard Garneau says word surfaced last week that the U.S. is seeking quotas that would put a hard cap on how much lumber could be exported…
Some P.E.I. forestry workers are learning how to safety get in and out of a moving helicopter — a skill they’ll need if they’re eventually deployed to help fight wildfires in Fort McMurray or other fires in remote areas. Ken Mayhew, the information officer with the Forests, Fish and Wildlife division of the provincial government,…
Tucked in the Rockies, the mountain towns of Banff and Canmore are built in a long, narrow valley surrounded by forests of Lodgepole pine, Douglas fir and spruce trees along steep slopes. The Crowsnest Pass, which was spared in the Lost Creek fire in 2003, sits in a low-elevation mountain pass in the middle of mature trees down in southern Alberta. Each community — and dozens of…
The Province is providing a $1-million lift to the Forestry Service Providers Compensation Fund to protect eligible forestry contractors and service providers in the event of licensee insolvency. The one-time grant was announced today by Minister of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations Steve Thomson at the Interior Logging Association’s 58th annual conference and trade…
Today, volunteers and planting partners in four communities across Ontario participated in Forests Ontario’s annual Community Planting Weekend. In the spirit of helping to re-green our province, more than 460 attendees planted a total of 2,800 new, native trees in Niagara, Windsor, Kitchener/Waterloo and York Region. Now in its eighth year, the annual Community Planting Weekend was…
Following the release of the COMEX report regarding the proposed construction of two major access roads in sections H west and I on Waswanipi territory, and the certificate of authorization issued for these projects, the Cree First Nation of Waswanipi is satisfied that the approval of these roads in the Broadback Forest will not encroach…
Ever-increasing pressures to clear-cut forests for fibre, biomass and chemical feedstocks tend to ignore their immense ecological and social values. But even as simple production systems, serious challenges to our forests’ sustainability exist. The broad outlines of this story have been known since the 1980s, when precipitous declines of salmon in many of our Atlantic…