The Amazon rainforest stores about as much carbon dioxide as humanity emits in three years. Therefore, her behavior is crucial in the fight against the climate crisis. The presidential election in Brazil and the defeat of Jair Bolsonaro give hope that the destruction of the world’s most valuable tropical forest will be stopped. Since the far-right Jair Bolsonaro took power in Brazil, Amazon deforestation has increased by 73%. In 2021, the world’s largest tropical forest lost its largest area in 15 years, and preliminary data for the first nine months of 2022 indicate that this year will be even worse. Dubbed the “Trump of the tropics,” the populist has lifted…

Periods of drought and heat waves have an impact on the health of forests planted a few decades ago. It will therefore be necessary to find more resistant species and also to review certain silvicultural methods. Report in Haut-Languedoc. Haut-Languedoc is a mid-mountain region located south of the Massif Central, between the departments of Hérault and Tarn, in the Occitanie region. It has 117 municipalities and extends over approximately 300,000 hectares, two thirds of which are covered with forest. Hardwoods, holm oaks, deciduous oaks, beeches and chestnuts, and conifers, firs, spruces, Douglas firs and pines. Relatively diversified forests since they are located at the confluence of three climates: Atlantic to…

Before considering any reforestation, the race against time is on to prevent the plots damaged by the summer fires from falling victim to insect attacks. Burned wood is not necessarily unusable. This is good news for the Landes massif due to forest fires during the summer. “In reality, there are two types of plots, specifies Stéphane Latour, director of the Fédération des industries du bois de Nouvelle-Aquitaine and Fibois Landes de Gascogne. Surfaces made up of young stands are not recoverable, but for the others, it is still possible to use the wood for the sawmill, papermaking, panel and wood energy industries.» The areas burned this summer are made up…

The bark beetle, 4-8 mm in size, is one of the most dangerous forest pests. The main food base for the bark beetle is spruce, pine, birch, less often fir, cedar and larch. The bark beetle feeds on the bast tissue of the tree – this is the inner layer of the bark, along which nutrients move from the roots to the crown of the tree. When the bast is eaten around the circumference, the nutrition of the tree stops completely and the tree dies. The bark of the tree is also used by adults for breeding. The functional purpose of the bark beetle in nature is the sanitary cleaning…

Logging resumes in Guinea after more than a year of prohibition motivated by the need to preserve a forest cover victim of massive looting. The West African country is one of the “bad students” of forest conservation. In Guinea, the resumption of logging has been authorized by the government. The measure comes after more than a year of a ban motivated by uncontrolled logging in a country with rich biodiversity attacked by massive deforestation. At the end of the Council of Ministers of October 14, 2022, the Guinean government indicated that the exploitation of wood should however be reserved for local use and supervised. As for the export of wood,…

In developing countries, economic growth often comes into conflict with environmental protection: as crop and pasture land expands, huge tracts of forest go under the axe. But perhaps there is a way to reduce global deforestation by increasing the productivity of existing farmland. Large-scale deforestation of tropical forests entails a host of unpleasant consequences – from the reduction of biodiversity to further deterioration of the climate. And Brazil is a key example: over three million square kilometers of the territory of this country are forests, but today more than a third of the Amazon area is occupied by agricultural land, which has already led to a decrease in the number…

Peter Wohlleben has been a bestselling author since “The Secret Life of Trees”. He recommends leaving the forest to its own devices. The forest suffers from climate change. Germany’s best-known forester, Peter Wohlleben, wants to give him some rest, and Environment Minister Lemke wants to cut down on wood. The German forests are suffering, the drought of recent years has hit them hard. According to the new Forest Monitor, a quarter of the trees have massively lost their vitality. The crowns become light because too few nutrients arrive. Only every fifth tree is healthy. Federal Environment Minister Steffi Lemke wants to save the forest in which fewer trees are felled.…

FSC Forest Week aims to spread the benefits of responsible management, production and consumption. FSC® Forest Week 2022, previously known as FSC® Friday, will take place between September 24 and 30 in order to educate and inform consumers about the benefits of FSC® certification and generate more spaces for education to transmit the value of sustainability to a greater number of people in the world. As part of this festival, the Swedish transnational Tetra Pak renews its commitment to caring for the environment and sustainable forest management, joining this celebration held annually by the Forest Stewardship Council FSC®, promoting the dissemination and benefits of management, responsible production and consumption, and…

With the election campaign in full swing, the CSN and Nature Québec are warning the public against the current depletion of Québec’s public forests, which could have serious repercussions for workers, biodiversity, forest communities, landscapes, vacationers and First Nations. The public forest is deteriorating and the Ministry of Forests, Wildlife and Parks (MFFP) must quickly change course to regain the community’s trust and put an end to the climate of confrontation that is taking hold in the forest. By Louis Bégin, President of the CSN Manufacturing Industry Federation, Frédéric Venne, Biodiversity and Forest Coordinator at Nature Québec and the co-signatories Louis Bélanger, eng.f., Nature Québec, Marie-Ève Desmarais, eng.f. , Jean-Pierre…

The forest fire in Saxon Switzerland is in its third week. Hundreds of firefighters continue to extinguish embers. Rain is not in sight. Professor Johann Georg Goldammer is a fire ecologist and heads the Center for Global Fire Monitoring in Freiburg im Breisgau. His team is currently on duty with the extinguishing tank in Grunewald. He also observes the fire in Saxon Switzerland. Question: In the case of a forest fire in Saxon Switzerland, the embers are still particularly dangerous. Professor Goldammer, where do you see the reasons for this? Johann Georg Goldammer: We don’t only have this issue in Saxon Switzerland. We also saw it with the fires in…