It starts as fluff on the side of a beech tree’s smooth grey bark. Pinpricks of white wax dot the tree; sometimes sparsely, other times it nearly covers the trunk. That’s the scale insect, digging in – opening up the tree’s bark – and is the first step to beech bark disease. Next comes the…
Columbia Forest Products is reopening its Rutherglen veneer mill, east of North Bay, after a five-year shutdown. Gary Gillespie, vice-president of Columbia’s Northern Operations, announced Dec. 15 that Columbia is in the “intermediate stages” of preparations to reopening the shuttered veneer facility, which closed in 2010 in the face of imports from China, a strong…
Resolute Forest Products Inc. (NYSE: RFP) (TSX: RFP) responds to misleading media statements by third parties regarding the U.S. Department of Commerce’s final order for countervailing duties on supercalendered paper from Canada. Contrary to those misleading media statements, the Department of Commerce found countervailable subsidies during its investigation only at the Port Hawkesbury mill in…
Northern Pulp says air pollution from the stacks at its pulp mill in Pictou County are now fully below environmental thresholds established by the Nova Scotia government. “We are in compliance and we intend to stay there,” general manager Bruce Chapman told CBC News on Wednesday. In October, the provincial government ordered the mill to produce an action plan to reduce…
The city is expected to start permitting six-storey wood frame construction in early 2016. Saskatoon’s current building code limits structures to four storeys. This initiative intends to satisfy customer interest and increase urban density through the use of mid-rise commercial or residential buildings. Key areas of focus include the downtown, University of Saskatchewan lands, and…
The IPCC’s Fifth Assessment lists sustainable harvesting as having the most significant climate mitigation benefit for the world’s forests. This view has been widely embraced, from the media to forest managers. However, researchers from Australian National University and Griffith University show this may not be a one-size-fits-all strategy. In their October, 2015 article in PLOS…
Drought could kill vast swaths of forests around the world if global warming isn’t contained, new research suggests. That’s in part because a fundamental structure found in trees may limit how much they can adapt to parched conditions. What’s more, climate predictions seem to suggest that droughts will be much more common in the United States, said William…
Since international leaders reached a historic climate change agreement at the United Nations meeting in Paris earlier this month, the conversations have shifted toward how to reach the ambitious goals. For the most part, national, sub-national and local governments, private and public organizations and the general public are all in agreement that much more needs…
Since international leaders reached a historic climate change agreement at the United Nations meeting in Paris this month, the conversations have shifted toward how to reach the ambitious goals. For the most part, national, sub-national and local governments, private and public organizations and the public are all in agreement that much more needs to be…
The side deal that Canada and Japan cut to the Trans Pacific Partnership trade agreement on Canadian restrictions to raw log exports includes a mechanism aimed at smoothing over future irritants. The mechanism is a bilateral committee on forest products, which is to begin operations five years after the TPP comes into force, assuming it…