Forestry

A management plan to curb an outbreak of the jack pine budworm on trees covering almost 90,000 hectares in the Rainy River district is being welcomed by forest licensers.

A resolution on the Canada-U.S. softwood lumber issue is far from being reached due to some core issues that must be worked out, says Free Trade Lumber Council executive vice-president Carl Grenier.

Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation (WLON) and Wood Tech Group from Finland are nearing the advanced stages of a business plan that could bring up to 300 value-added industry jobs to the northwest region.

Convergence Ethanol Inc., the future builder of a Hearst biomass-to-ethanol refinery, is teaming with financial giant Wells Fargo to place $300,000 in securities for the $150 million US project.

Manufacturing jobs in the forest sector are heading to South America where wages are lower, the trees grow quicker and regulations are more lax.

Tree planting is a summertime right of passage for many students. It means a 6 a.m. wake-up in call rain, shine or sometimes even snow, followed by a bumpy bus ride down a washboard-surfaced logging road into a planting block.

Tembec’s 200,000-acre timberland located in the central-southeast portion of the Gordon Cosens forest near Hearst is up for sale.

The devastation in the forestry industry has created greater awareness in Northern Ontario to consider creating green fuel projects from the region’s abundant wood waste, says a leading bio-products expert.

Take it or leave it. The Ontario forest industry is putting on a brave face, but privately they have plenty of misgivings about the new softwood compromise.

A Wawa wood pelletizing mill has struck a mega-million dollar deal with a Mississauga hardwood flooring company to expand their business and distribute their technology across North America and possibly even internationally.