High in the forests of the mountain parks, there’s a sun-loving tree that relies on a small bird to spread its seeds. The whitebark pine, which has five needles and hard cones, plays an important role in stabilizing steep slopes, controlling the rate of snow melt and providing habitat for that bird (called the Clark’s…
UNBC unveiled its newest classroom today. It’s located 60km east of Prince George in the Aleza lake Research Forest. The Field Education Centre is built from locally supplied timber and sits on a rise overlooking the McGregor Mountains. The 1,200 foot square foot building can hold groups as large as 50 and will provide a…
By mid-October, the U.S. Lumber Coalition — a.k.a. The Coalition to those who have spent their lives in the trenches of softwood lumber battles — will be able to file new anti-dumping and countervailing duty complaints against Canadian softwood lumber exports. Unless a replacement for the 2006 Softwood Lumber Agreement can be negotiated in the…
Massive swaths of burning forest aren’t good news for Alberta’s forestry sector. However, the Alberta Forest Products Association says its members expect several wildfires to burn up forests every year and plan around them. AFPA’s Brock Mulligan tells the Alberta Morning News, it remains to be seen how much this will affect the industry. “We…
Images of the fire-ravaged landscape around Fort McMurray have prompted some nature lovers to question what will become of the area’s wildlife. But specialists across the environmental field say the animals are probably not only fine, but may even thrive in the after-effects of the wildfire. The Alberta Institute for Wildlife Conservation responded to civilian…
Video cameras and logs will both roll during the annual Kaslo May Days Logger Sports this month. TV personality Andrew Younghusband — known for hosting reality shows including Canada’s WorstDriver and Canada’s Worst Handyman — will participate in several events as part of a new Discoverychannel series, Tougher Than it Looks. “I think it will…
We’re just one month into the forest fire season and the fire hazard is high across northeastern Ontario. The Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry has reported 45 fires have burned 85 hectares of land across our region so far. The region covers from Haliburton in the south, to Cochrane in the north. Many forest fires are…
Wildfire ranger Dan Gorzeman directed a crew as it put out hotspots smouldering beneath the boreal forest northeast of Slave Lake, Alta., in August 2015. But he wasn’t on the ground. He was hundreds of metres above the blackened bush in a helicopter, staring at the screen of an infrared scanner. “These scans show us where these ground fires are and we relay them on a map…
Alberta Forestry’s wildfire experts are at the mercy of the weather when forest fires burn out of control. The Fort McMurray blaze that at first seemed manageable turned into a raging inferno bearing down on the city in less than an hour. Here’s a rundown of how a destructive fire wound its way into northern…
J.D. Irving Ltd. has started to remove a mountain of garbage it dumped on its own property, after being directed by the New Brunswick Department of Environment to clean up the site in Parkindale, near Elgin. “The stockpile of Styrofoam seedling containers on JDI land in Parkindale would be considered an illegal dump under the Clean Environment Act,”…