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2026 Wildfire Season

Cut stumpage to $0.25 m3, like they did for the beetle kill wood, and get out of the way... with some guard rails of course.

The forest industry is dying in BC due to onerous government policies pandering to ill informed, green washed urban BC voters who regularly return the NDP to power, and who suffer no ill effects from burning interior villages apart from some smoke in their lattes.

Meanwhile across the border (in Alberta) they have almost half the costs as I understand it, so that's where companies like Canfor are going. There, and the SE states. But you'd know more about that than me,
Mills are closing in Ab as quick as they are in BC.
The closures have more to do with the US market then what ever a local government is doing.
It will turn around and hopefully this time we get our thousand dollar bills instead of ten dollar bills.
 
Cut stumpage to $0.25 m3, like they did for the beetle kill wood, and get out of the way... with some guard rails of course.

The forest industry is dying in BC due to onerous government policies pandering to ill informed, green washed urban BC voters who regularly return the NDP to power, and who suffer no ill effects from burning interior villages apart from some smoke in their lattes.

Meanwhile across the border (in Alberta) they have almost half the costs as I understand it, so that's where companies like Canfor are going. There, and the SE states. But you'd know more about that than me,
Still need to a have a market to deliver to. I have clients who log mostly cheap wood...but it's byproduct/slash piles from a sawlog company. And it's only about 20% of the area before the trucking kills the option. And no reforestation requirement as the sawmill does that.

Canfor just shuttered a mill in Alberta two weeks ago citing market tariffs and decreasing wood supply. Fires have been bad here too and with the end of the MPB surge cuts fiber is in tight supply. When you're facing 50% tariffs on lumber its amazing anyone is operating in Canada.
 
Outstanding …
The Bald Range fire is the big wildfire by Summerland/ Peachland.


Yes that is a UH-60 BlackHawk helicopter owned and operated by Contour Helicopters.
 

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New ignition a few km southwest of Kamloops, just a couple hours old. Looks like they’ve scrambled Conair hard, two bird dogs, six skimmers, two land based tankers all on site in the past hour or less, and two more Dash-8 bombers are almost on scene.
 
I just heard a radio ad from DHC saying that Canada needs a federal water bomber fleet. Nothing like busking your products by trying to shape public policy.
 
New ignition a few km southwest of Kamloops, just a couple hours old. Looks like they’ve scrambled Conair hard, two bird dogs, six skimmers, two land based tankers all on site in the past hour or less, and two more Dash-8 bombers are almost on scene.
Very intermittent dry lightning working its way across the desert and the interior. Not much rain in LR forecast all the way out to October.
 
Very intermittent dry lightning working its way across the desert and the interior. Not much rain in LR forecast all the way out to October.
Ugh, that sucks. I hope you come through it ok.

My wife and I have just cancelled a planned road trip to B.C. and back due to the fires; no way subjecting our kids to the smoke is wise.
 
Ugh, that sucks. I hope you come through it ok.

My wife and I have just cancelled a planned road trip to B.C. and back due to the fires; no way subjecting our kids to the smoke is wise.
It’s truly horrible. Every day for months on end.
 
New ignition a few km southwest of Kamloops, just a couple hours old. Looks like they’ve scrambled Conair hard, two bird dogs, six skimmers, two land based tankers all on site in the past hour or less, and two more Dash-8 bombers are almost on scene.

Looks like it’s currently being held with possibly an unit crew onsite. Glad to see that they were able to get on top of it.
 
Heads up for 2 Div:

Fast-moving wildfires reshaping B.C.’s forests, new study finds​

Seven of the 10 fastest-growing fires were in Canada in 2023, the year of the country’s worst fire season.


https://www.vmcdn.ca/files/texttospeech/12748456-d3175421-17b1-4454-9777-f9f4e3f456c6.mp3
New research suggests that fast-moving wildfires, such as the Bald Range blaze near Summerland that forced recent evacuations, are burning bigger and leaving forests less able to grow back to their pre-burn state.

The study, published in Science Advances, analyzed nearly 3,500 fires across Canada and the western U.S. between 2012 and 2023. Researchers used satellite data to track how quickly fires spread each day.

They found the fastest-moving fires burned more severely, killed more trees and made it more difficult for forests to regenerate.

“It’s not necessarily incredibly surprising that fast-moving fires are responsible for the largest area burned. But we now also show that they have pretty outsized ecological impacts as well,” said Ellen Whitman, a forest researcher with the Canadian Forest Service at Natural Resources Canada and one of the study authors.

Those impacts can range from changing the tree makeup of a forest, “something we have been seeing quite a lot in the northwestern boreal,” Whitman said, to no tree regeneration at all, a result Whitman called “pretty extreme.”

Some tree species can regrow from seeds even if the parent is killed by fire, but others need seeds from live trees nearby.

Fast-moving fires can leave large patches of forest with no living trees and no way to regrow the way they were before.

The pattern was most pronounced in the Western Cordillera ecosystem, which covers much of B.C.’s central and southern interior and includes the Bald Range wildfire in Summerland, which has forced thousands from their homes.

The fire mapped at about 252 square kilometres as of Thursday afternoon. Some residents have been allowed to return to the community, though evacuation alerts remain in effect.

“The Western Cordillera is also likely to have experienced the greatest effects of ongoing modern fire suppression,” the study’s authors wrote, noting the ecoregion accounted for more of the area burned, more fires and more fast-spreading events than any other region studied.

 
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