Want to help fight the spread of the mountain pine beetle, but aren’t sure where to start? Well, there’s an app for that. At the end of October, fRI Research launched a free smartphone application as a quick and easy way for people to report the presence of mountain pine beetle throughout the region. Once…
Catalyst Paper has fought its way out of what it considers an unfair duty on some of its paper entering the U.S. The company announced Nov. 21 that the U.S. Department of Commerce issued preliminary results in its expedited review of Catalyst, finding that Catalyst received a negligible amount of subsidies during the applicable period…
The owner of a Smithers-based business that uses cutting edge technology to get in-depth pictures of northern B.C. forests has plenty of kind words for Northern Development Initiative Trust. Without help from the NDIT’s forest innovation fund, Larry McCulloch of L.M. Forest Resource Solutions Ltd. says he would have had a much tougher time getting…
A third-generation sawmill west of Ottawa is spending $16.9 million to bring its facility up-to-date. Under the expansion project, Lavern Heideman & Sons Ltd. plans to modernize its infrastructure, purchase new equipment and consolidate some of its operations at its mill in Eganville, Ont.—not far from Pembroke, Ont. The project is expected to create 18…
From learning foundational map-and-compass skills to exploring the link between climate change and spruce bark beetles, students at the College of New Caledonia (CNC) spend a lot of time in the college’s 12,500 hectares of research forest. The two-year Natural Resources and Environmental Technology (NRET) diploma program is the only one in British Columbia with…
The U.S. Lumber Coalition has filed a petition asking the U.S. Department of Commerce to investigate Canadian softwood lumber shipments with an eye to potentially levying new duties, kicking off a fresh round of litigation between two countries with a long history of trade disputes over wood. The petition is said to be hundreds of…
The American lumber lobby filed a petition Friday with the United States government alleging Canadian lumber is being subsidized by provinces like B.C., and dumped at discount prices into the U.S. market. The coalition’s petition is expected to result in heavy enough penalties on Canadian lumber producers to force shift curtailments and mill closures. Mills…
David Palmer of Fredericton is looking for nominations of a different kind to be included in a new book. The longtime forester wants nominations for a second edition of The Great Trees of New Brunswick. The first edition was produced 30 years ago by the late David Folster and the Canadian Forestry Association of New Brunswick. The book included…
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced today that the U.S. Forest Service has identified an additional 36 million dead trees across California since its last aerial survey in May 2016. This brings the total number of dead trees since 2010 to over 102 million on 7.7 million acres of California’s drought stricken forests. In…
A seemingly disgrunted (but likely tongue-in-cheek) reader argues that due democratic process was not adhered to in nominating the gray jay to be Canada’s national bird (“Choice of gray jay an utter failure of democracy,” letter, Nov. 18). Let’s dispel that argument. In January 2015, the Royal Canadian Geographic Society asked Canadians to help choose…