The newly signed forestry agreement between the province of Quebec and the Grand Council of the Crees is a remarkable accomplishment. Six months of challenging negotiations, mediated by former Quebec premier Lucien Bouchard, have yielded a set of compromises that will put limits on logging in a 7,245-square-kilometre tract of land, completely protect an additional 9,134 square kilometres…
The forest industry, much like the forests we rely on, is in a perpetual state of transition. Markets swing, customer demands shift, new research and experience informs, practices and technology evolve, climate patterns change, and people, politics and the law transform. This myriad of factors means the industry is in a perpetual state of adaptation. …
Cool, wet weather this weekend helped dampened some forest fires, but didn’t prevent new ones from starting. The province’s fire count now stands at 221, up from 180 fires that were active last week. Fire crews have made little headway subduing two large fires near Pemberton. The Boulder Creek and Elaho fires are 0% contained,…
A couple of red pines in northeastern New Brunswick are the oldest of their kind in Atlantic Canada, by far, according to a professor and the New Brunswick Museum. “These trees have lived 300 years,” said Ben Phillips, the conservation scientist at the UNESCO Fundy Biosphere Reserve and a professor at Mount Allison University. Stephen…
In yet another life (I have a checkered past) I worked in a sawmill situated on the margin of False Creek in downtown Vancouver. (Today, False Creek is a fashionable Vancouver address. But in 1948 the inlet called False Creek was a virtual cesspool; it was wonderful the stuff that rode up the jackladder clinging…
While Canada’s politicians fiddle about on the barbecue circuit this summer, the country burns. By Monday afternoon, 5,041 wildland fires had scorched 3.02 million hectares, equal to about half the area of Nova Scotia, and 902 of them were still burning. Air tanker companies are logging twice the normal total of flying hours. Ground crews…
80% of organisations remove Greenwash following the latest Two Sides Anti-Greenwash Campaign Two Sides have been actively challenging organisations which use greenwash to mislead consumers regarding the environmental benefits of alternative media. They have done this by requesting that organisations carefully consider their messages and the potentially misleading anti-print and paper statements that are being…
Bryan Hayes, Member of Parliament for Sault Ste. Marie, on behalf of the Honourable Greg Rickford, Canada’s Minister of Natural Resources and Minister for the Federal Economic Development Initiative for Northern Ontario, today announced investments in science and infrastructure upgrades to Natural Resources Canada’s Great Lakes Forestry Centre in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. This $5 million in new funding builds on the…
A forestry agreement signed Monday halts a $180-million Cree lawsuit against the Quebec government. But one group was missing from the negotiation table — the Innu First Nation. While the agreement between the Quebec government and the Grand Council of the Crees calls for co-management of forestry cutting and protection of woodland caribou in northern Quebec, it may set…
It’s a safe bet you never imagined you’d see a Batman suit made from tree bark. But that’s exactly what French artist Christophe Guinet — who also calls himself Monsieur Plant — has created, with a little help from Warner Brothers France and the Splendens Factory, a Paris-based design agency. Guinet, whose work is on…