British Columbia plans to turn the mountain pine beetle epidemic devastating the province’s pine forests into new opportunities such as bioenergy and engineered forest products, says B.C.’s “beetle boss.”

              Forestry officials are looking at European models and initiatives to convert beetle-killed trees into economic opportunities, provincial bark beetle coordinator Rod DeBoice told EnviroLine.

              Co-generation or bioenergy plants might be able to take wood waste from mills as well as beetle-killed trees that aren’t of sufficient quality to go to a primary sawmill, he said. Burning such wood in a bioenergy plant to produce energy would help reduce B.C.’s reliance…

              The mountain pine beetle that has destroyed about nine million hectares or 40 per cent of B.C.’s lodgepole pine forest since 1993 is now killing spruce trees as well, say researchers at the University of Northern British Columbia in Prince George.

              Staffan Lingren, a professor of ecosystem science at UNBC, said researchers have observed pine beetles successfully reproducing in spruce. However, Lingren doesn’t envision a large-scale destruction of B.C. spruce forest similar to that seen in the pine forests, which have an estimated value of $240 billion. If a new type of beetle biotype evolves that attacks spruce trees, it…

              The B.C. government needs a pricing system for power producers based on the type of fibre used in their projects, to ensure pulp and paper companies have sufficient and affordable wood waste for fuel, an industry task force says.

              The stepped pricing structure should encourage incentives for power producers to use mountain pine-beetle killed wood rather than relying on cheaper, more accessible wood waste that now goes to pulp and paper plants, says the B.C. Pulp and Paper Task Force. B.C. produces about 7.5 million tonnes per year of waste wood – enough to generate an estimated 1,500 megawatts,…

              Alberta-PacificForest Industries (Al-Pac) has kept its pulp mill operation’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions stable, despite increasing its pulp production.

              Al-Pac is North America’s only pulp mill to achieve “carbon neutrality,” and is possibly the first mill globally to attain this status, the company says. “While our commitment to protecting the environment is central in everything we do, our efforts to reduce carbon also provide us with cost savings,” says Ken Plourde, Al-Pac’s director of forest strategies.

              Al-Pac is North America’s largest single-line kraft pulp mill, producing 650,000 air-dried tonnes of bleached hardwood and softwood pulp annually.

              The company’s manufacturing operations reduced…

              The Alberta government is committing $50 million in emergency funding to fight the mountain pine beetle infestation in the province.

              The number of beetle-attacked trees increased to an estimated three million in early 2007, compared with about only 19,000 a year earlier, after a ‘beetle rain’ last July from migrating insect populations in northeastern B.C. For the first time, the beetle has been found north of Peace River, the farthest north it has ever been seen.

              “The front line in the war against mountain pine beetle has moved…

              Key disputes in the six-month-old softwood lumber agreement between Canada and the U.S. appear headed to the London-based International Court of Arbitration.

              Talks in Ottawa in April between Canadian and American officials made little progress in resolving concerns by U.S. governments and the forest industry in the U.S. about a surge of lumber exports from B.C. in recent months and claims of provincial subsidies in Ontario and Quebec. The U.S. is also targeting a $127.5-million program, announced in the federal budget in February, to conduct forest research and promote marketing.

              U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab, in a six-page letter…