A rapidly rising tick-borne disease called anaplasmosis is spreading across Canada, transmitted by the same blacklegged ticks that carry Lyme. For forestry workers and logging crews who spend their days in exactly the kind of habitat these ticks prefer, it’s a hazard that safety plans need to account for.
Medical experts are using language that forestry supervisors should not ignore. Here is what the science says about wildfire smoke exposure, why outdoor workers face elevated risk, and what work-site decisions the evidence supports.
Fires are now the largest single driver of forest loss globally, and nearly every record-breaking wildfire year has occurred since 2020. The Forest Stewardship Council’s latest guidance reaffirms what BC operators already know on the ground: responsible forestry is not just good environmental practice — it is one of the most effective risk mitigation tools available.
A weekend of rain and cooler temperatures offered a brief reprieve for BC wildfire crews, but fire managers are warning that returning heat will drive a rapid uptick in fire activity — with direct consequences for forest operators across the province’s interior.
The K’ih ts’aaʔdze Protection Area, established July 10, 2026, places approximately 45,000 hectares of Crown land in northeastern BC under a 10-year interim designation that specifically restricts forestry activities for four years.
The Trump administration stripped habitat modification from the ESA’s definition of ‘harm,’ ending 50 years of protection. Logging on critical wildlife habitat becomes permissible September 14, 2026.
BC mills processed over one million cubic metres of burned logs in 2024–25 — twice the prior year — as the province fast-tracks salvage permits. But researchers warn the same \”falldown effect\” that closed mills after the pine beetle is already underway.
One year after Governor Newsom declared a state of emergency, California has approved more than 300 wildfire safety projects covering nearly 57,000 acres — all within 300 days. The fast-track program has slashed project approval times from a year or more down to as little as 30 days, while maintaining environmental safeguards. For the forestry sector, it marks a significant shift in how quickly large-scale fire-risk reduction work can actually get done on the ground.
Tree species diversity is increasingly recognized as a practical forestry strategy to reduce drought impacts and wildfire severity across North American forests.
New forest perception dataset SilvaScenes enables tree instance segmentation and species classification from under-canopy images, advancing AI for forestry applications.