The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that China is preparing to invest about $100 million in timber assets mainly on Vancouver Island.

The Journal said China’s government wealth fund, the China Investment Corp., is negotiating with Toronto-based Brookfield Asset Management for a 12.5 per cent stake in Island Timberlands, which owns about 254,000 hectares of forest land.

Now that the damage of the mountain pine beetle epidemic is mostly done, the B.C. government is poised to launch a 10-year action plan to figure out precisely what is left of its ravaged forests and what needs to be done to replant them.

Last week in Montreal, clanging cookware and red squares became symbols of solidarity with an Indigenous community defending its land rights. On Wednesday, July 18, about 200 people demonstrated at the Montreal headquarters of Resolute Forest Products, the logging company currently locked in a stand-off with Algonquin protestors near Poigan Bay, Quebec.

Toronto, Ontario – (July 17, 2012) – Duz Cho Logging, a company 100 per cent owned by the McLeod Lake Indian Band, today received the Aboriginal Forest Products Business Leadership Award from the Forest Products Association of Canada (FPAC).

TORONTO, July 12, 2012 /CNW/ - The Forest Products Association of Canada (FPAC) and the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) will present the annual FPAC/AFN Aboriginal Forest Products Business Leadership Award at the Assembly of First Nations Annual General Meeting in Toronto, Ontario on Tuesday, July 17th.

July 10, Poigan Bay, QC – Around 20-30 members of the Algonquins of Barriere Lake were read their rights by Sûreté du Québec officers late last night, warning of arrests today if people did not allow logging to proceed.

Flows on the lower Fraser River have been high over the past 3-4 weeks as a result of wet weather in June and on-going melting of a significant snowpack in the Fraser River watershed. The Fraser River at Hope (08MF005) reached an instantaneous peak flow of 12,005 m3/s on June 22nd, and the Fraser River at Mission (08MH024) reached a maximum level of 6.38 m on June 23rd.

The tree didn’t have a name, like the Three Sisters – three Sitka spruce nearby – or belong to a famous old-growth stand, like Vancouver Island’s Avatar or Cathedral groves.

The Atikemekw blockade of logging roads and a Canadian National railway in the Haute Mauricie region continued Wednesday as Aboriginal leaders are demanding a larger stake in forestry operations on their territory.

A committee looking for ways to boost B.C.’s dwindling store of timber is looking at logging protected areas such as old-growth forests as one way out of a supply crunch.

Other options include cutting greater volumes of “marginally economic” timber and pumping up forest growth by using fertilizer and other intensive management techniques.