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Forest Journalism for a Sustainable Future

Brock Commons: University of British Columbia students move into world’s tallest CLT building

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Brock Commons Tallwood House is the University of British Columbia’s newest dormitory. Photo: UBC

College students at the University of British Columbia are making history this fall as the first residents of Brock Commons, an 18-story dormitory made of cross-laminated timber.

Called Tallwood House, the student residence currently holds the title as the tallest mass timber building in the world. Four-hundred UBC students are its first occupants, mostly upperclassmen and graduate students.

The building offers 33 four-bedroom suites and 272 studio apartments, renting for $924 to $1,116.51 per month.

RELATED  Going up! Watch Brock Commons rise 18 stories
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Winds of change? Federal judges uphold collaborative forest restoration projects

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The Colville National Forest’s A to Z forest restoration project employs a variety of tree-thinning methods across 12,000 acres. Photo: Colville National Forest

Federal judges are increasingly endorsing the methods and goals of the U.S. Forest Service’s collaborative forest management process, as evidenced by two recent U.S. District Court rulings.

Evergreen magazine’s Jim Petersen provided the analysis in a recent online article. Both cases in question involved the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, an advocacy group based in Helena, Montana, that has actively litigated Forest Service decisions for decades.

The decisions came on appeal from judges considering these cases:

  • Alliance for the Wild Rockies v. Jim Peña (U.S. Forest Service Region Six) and Rodney Solomon (Colville National Forest)
  • and Alliance for the Wild Rockies v. Mary Farnsworth (Idaho Panhandle National Forest), Leanne Marten (Forest Service Region One) and Thomas Tidwell (now former-chief, U.S. Forest Service).

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Fire birds are back, and thriving, in New Jersey’s Pine Barrens

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Bill Haines, left, the owner of Pine Island Cranberry Company, and Jimmy Sloan, right, of N.J. Fish and Wildlife, release wild quail onto Pine Island property in Chatsworth, New Jersey. Photo: John Parke/N.J. Audubon

Fire has returned to New Jersey’s Pine Barrens, and with it the fire birds that disappeared in the 1980s because of habitat loss.

New Jersey Audubon started reintroducing bobwhite quail to a Pine Island cranberry farm in 2015, toting the birds to their new home from Georgia.

The migrants built and populated nests later that year, and more reintroductions followed. Now Bill Haines, the farm’s owner, has been awarded the National Fire Bird Conservation Award from the National Bobwhite Conservation Initiative. [Read more…]

The West is on fire: Get used to it, says Montana fire ecologist

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Heat, low humidity and high winds sent the Lolo Peak fire on a spectacular run late on Aug. 18, filling the sky to the south of Missoula, Montana, with its pyrocumulus cloud. Photo: Kelly Henkel

Are the 2017 wildfire season and its long, miserable, smoke-choked days the new normal?

University of Montana journalism professor Joe Eaton recently sat down with UM fire ecology professor Philip Higuera to explore the reasons why the West is burning up this summer.

The resulting Q&A, published Sept. 11 by City Lab, is a thoughtful look at the role of global warming, shorter-term climate events, and longtime forest and fire management policies on the severity of a wildfire season, this one being the case in point. [Read more…]

Scientists: Climate change, ‘flash drought’ ignited 2017 wildfire season

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Among the casualties of this summer’s extreme wildfires was Sperry Chalet, one of two remaining backcountry chalets in Glacier National Park. Photo: National Park Service

Wildfires continue to burn vast scars across the West, but the political blowback has already begun, with politicians from several states blaming environmentalists for the summer of 2017’s devastation.

But scientists at the National Weather Service and the U.S. Drought Monitor are clear about the conditions that sent this summer’s Western wildfire season into overdrive – even if they didn’t see it coming.

A “flash drought” seized Montana and the Dakotas in early summer, the experts say, brought on by sustained high temperatures and a dearth of rain.

They blame climate change, and warn that these type of events will only become more frequent as global warming deepens. [Read more…]