Looking up for a raptor's nest or looking down for a rare plant - JDI Naturalist, Kelly Honeyman, talks about the extensive environmental training programs that the company conducts each year for over 140 foresters and contractors who work in JDI Woodlands operations.

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J.D. Irving, Limited (JDI) and Dr. David Miller of Carleton University receive Synergy Award for Innovation. Greg Adams, Manager of Research and Development for J.D. Irving, Limited and Dr. David Miller will accept a Synergy Award for Innovation for their collaborative research on protecting trees from spruce budworm. Miller has studied the spruce budworm for over 25 years and has been working with J.D. Irving, Limited to reduce the impact risk of future epidemics. Miller and collaborators found that endophytes, fungi that occur naturally in the needles of conifers, are the key important to protecting improve tolerance of trees against to spruce budworm. Some endophytes produce natural toxins that slow the growth of the spruce budworm insect. J.D. Irving, Limited’s state-of-the-art laboratory in Sussex, N.B. will produce inoculum for up to 30 million seedlings per year from nurseries in eastern Canada.

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J.D. Irving, Limited is currently the only forestry company in Atlantic Canada that shares data about species and ecological communities of conservation concern to the Atlantic Canada Conservation Data Centre (CDC) in Sackville, New Brunswick.

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An integrated forest management optimization model was developed to calculate potential spruce budworm (Choristoneura fumiferana Clemens) effects on forest and wood product carbon (C) from 2007 to 2057 and to evaluate potential C sequestration benefits of alternative management strategies (salvage, biological insecticide application). The model was tested using simulated spruce budworm outbreaks on a 210 000 ha intensively managed forest in northwestern New Brunswick, Canada. Under a severe spruce budworm outbreak scenario from 2007 to 2020, harvest volume and forest and wood product C storage in 2027 were projected to be reduced by 1.34 Mm3, 1.48 Mt, and 0.26 Mt, respectively, compared with the levels under no defoliation. Under the same severe outbreak scenario, implementation of salvage and harvest replanning plus a biological insecticide applied aerially to 40% of susceptible forest area, reduced harvest, forest C, and wood product C impacts by 73%, 41%, and 56%, respectively. Extrapolation of these results to all of New Brunswick suggests that a future severe spruce budworm outbreak could effectively increase total provincial annual C emissions (all sources) by up to 40%, on average, over the next 20 years. This modeling approach can be used to identify to what extent insecticide application, as a forest-C-offset project, could result in additional C storage than without forest and pest management.

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