The fire came in waves at Howard Ewashko’s family business: once on Tuesday afternoon, again in the evening. Both times, Ewashko, his brother Craig, and a small band of workers at the sawmill north of Fort McMurray saw the “beast” of a wildfire threaten their operations, before it turned back. Today, the Northland Forest Products sawmill is still…
Carissa Camenson stood in a vast acre and a half arena in Missoula, Montana, the ground covered with chips and flakes of wood. The sophomore forestry major from Northern Arizona University expertly pulled back and forth on her six-foot-long crosscut saw that sliced through an approximately 20-inch diameter log. Camenson was competing in the single…
Cities are shaped by fire. From Chicago to San Francisco, enormous swathes of urban fabric were wiped away by accident in the 19th century. These horrific disasters did more than just clear the way for new development, though. They also helped spur building codes that outlawed the use of one particularly dangerous building material: timber….
Wildfires menacing Fort McMurray for the past two weeks have carved a new path of destruction, levelling an oilsands work camp to the north of the city. Two others were still under threat as of Tuesday night. The fire continues to grow, spreading to more than 355,000 hectares, and it’s not just oil and gas…
2016 Upcoming Tour Unique Pro-D experiences for teachers—FREE forestry tours Festival of Forestry tours take teachers to rural and resource-based communities throughout BC. Our three-day tours provide teachers of all levels and subject areas with curriculum-focused, hands-on teaching ideas. There will be opportunities to talk with various resource experts and professionals along the way, including…
“We’re going to have a long dry summer, I mean just look, it’s a fire waiting to happen.” That was how NDP MLA Scott Fraser described what he was seeing as he toured a cut block between Port Alberni and Lake Cowichan Wednesday. It is where massive, valuable logs have been sitting untouched for up to…
The fire came in waves at Howard Ewashko’s family business: once on Tuesday afternoon, again in the evening. Both times, Ewashko, his brother Craig, and a small band of workers at the sawmill north of Fort McMurray saw the “beast” of a wildfire threaten their operations, before it turned back. Today, the Northland Forest Products sawmill is still…
The City of Winnipeg is ramping up efforts to create an inventory of ash trees. Crews are searching backyards and back lanes to count and inspect ask trees, in danger because of a devastating pest, the emerald ash borer beetle. The city says it’s not a matter of if the emerald ash borer beetle will…
When the Mountain Pine Beetle (MPB) arrived in Alberta some nine or 10 years ago it hit hard. Whole areas of pine trees were red with dead or dying trees, and people everywhere were losing trees on private property, golf courses were losing trees, towns were losing trees from boulevards as the beetles which had…
LET’S TALK about jobs, good resource sector jobs to be more specific. However, before everyone gasps in disbelief thinking I’ve changed my mind on Ajax… I haven’t. I have nothing against mining and fully appreciate it’s’ tremendous value to the economy but — and this is the big ‘BUT’ — Building an open pit mine in Kamloops…