European Forestry Pulse #75 🌲

Hello,

2025 was the worst wildfire season in Europe since records began. Over one million hectares burned. Damage to property and infrastructure costs the EU around €2.5 billion every year. Foresters have been saying for years that this is not just a firefighting problem. It's a forest management problem.

On March 25, the European Commission agreed.

Brussels published its first integrated wildfire risk management strategy. It covers prevention, preparedness, response, and recovery. And for the first time, it names active forest management as the foundation of resilience.

The Confederation of European Forest Owners (CEPF) welcomed it the same week. Here's what's moving European forestry this week:

The European Commission published its first integrated wildfire risk management strategy on March 25, 2026. It is the most comprehensive EU position on wildfire ever produced. And it places forest management at the centre.

For European forest owners who have been pushing this point for a decade, that's a big shift.

Until now, EU wildfire policy was fragmented. Civil protection handled response. Climate policy handled prevention narratives. Forest policy handled the trees themselves. Nobody owned the whole picture.

The new strategy connects all four phases — prevention, preparedness, response, and recovery — into one framework. Commissioners Hadja Lahbib and Jessika Roswall presented it as a whole-of-society response built on the Preparedness Union Strategy adopted exactly one year earlier.

The headline numbers tell you why:

Buried in the technical text is the sentence European forest owners have waited years to read. The Commission promotes "sustainable forest management and diverse forest structures, where possible, including the use of alternatives to monocultural plantations of highly flammable species."

In plain English: planting one tree species across thousands of hectares is part of the wildfire problem. Mixed forests, managed actively, are part of the solution.

This is not radical. It's been the consensus among forest scientists for years. But now it's in a Commission strategy document. That changes the policy gravity.

The Confederation of European Forest Owners reacted within days. Their April newsletter welcomed the strategy and noted that CEPF intervened at the high-level EU roundtable on wildfire risk management. They urged the Commission to recognise active sustainable forest management as the foundation of wildfire resilience.

The Commission did. CEPF stated in its April newsletter that the recognition of active forest management as essential is welcome.

This is what successful policy advocacy looks like. Years of engagement. A clear technical case. A moment when the data and the political will line up.

The strategy proposes more than warm words. Real instruments include:

For foresters, the most important piece is the CAP linkage. Wildfire prevention is being framed as a public good that justifies public payment. That changes the funding conversation.

A strategy is not yet a regulation. The Council Recommendation will need member state buy-in. The CAP money has to actually reach forest owners — and as we documented in EFP #74, that's where European forest policy keeps stumbling.

But the framing has shifted. For the first time, Brussels is treating forest management as wildfire infrastructure. Not as an afterthought.

If you've been arguing this case to your local authority, your insurance company, or your investors, the Commission just gave you a citable document. Use it. Sources: European Commission — IP/26/698, March 25, 2026 | COM(2026) 330 final — Communication on Integrated Wildfire Risk Management | Council Document ST-7652-2026 | CEPF Newsletter — April 2026

While Brussels was writing strategy, Ireland was running operations. Coillte and the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) have been deploying drones and aerial monitoring for wildfire detection and response since 2021.

The numbers Coillte has now made public: since 2021, more than 300 fires on Coillte lands, causing damage to over 2,500 hectares. That's the operational baseline a small country with limited resources can produce when forest managers and civil authorities share data.

Why it matters: The new EU wildfire strategy talks about technology integration. Ireland is already doing it. The combination of drone overflight, satellite data, and ground-based response coordination is the model the rest of Europe will copy.

The takeaway: If you manage forests in a fire-prone region, the question is no longer whether to invest in monitoring technology. It's which mix of drone, satellite, and ground sensor data fits your landscape and your budget. Ireland just showed it's possible at the national level. Sources: Irish Farmers Journal — Coillte and NPWS to use drones for faster detection of forest fires, 1 April 2026 | Coillte — Coillte and NPWS using drones to fight forest fires | Government of Ireland — Coillte and the NPWS deploy drones

Luke Finland published its provisional 2025 wood energy data on March 20. The headline number is small but the structural shift behind it is large.

Heat and combined heat-and-power plants consumed 20.8 million m³ of solid wood fuels in 2025. That's 40.8 TWh of energy. Down 5% from 2024.

Inside that total, two trends are pulling in opposite directions:

Finland is moving from burning trees to burning leftovers. The energy is still there. The source has changed.

Why it matters: Finland is the European reference market for wood energy. About 28% of Finnish energy comes from wood. When the structural mix shifts here, it signals where EU bioenergy policy is heading. Burning primary wood for electricity faces tightening political pressure. Burning residuals from sawmills and pulp mills does not.

The takeaway: If you sell forest residues or operate a sawmill in the Nordic or Baltic region, the residual stream is the growth market. If you sell roundwood for energy, the long-term trend is against you. Source: Luke Finland — Wood in Energy Generation 2025 (provisional), 20 March 2026

The EU Emissions Trading System benchmark settled around €72 per tonne in early April 2026. EU Carbon Permits were recorded at €71.69 on April 3 on a CFD tracking the benchmark market. Today, April 7, the European Commission is publishing the first weekly Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) certificate price under the regime that took full effect on January 1.

This is not just a number for traders. It is a price signal that ripples into every forest carbon conversation in Europe.

Why it matters: The CRCF carbon farming methodology is still in consultation. CEPF has just submitted its response (we'll cover that on Thursday). But the underlying carbon price environment has firmed up. €70+ per tonne for ETS is the level at which corporate buyers start treating high-quality removals as a serious procurement category, not a side bet.

For European forest owners, this is the second piece of the puzzle. The first was the legal framework. The second is the price floor.

The takeaway: If you're exploring carbon revenue as a complement to timber income, this is the moment to understand the difference between ETS allowances, voluntary credits, and CRCF-certified units. They are not the same thing. They will not trade at the same price. And the buyers are different. Sources: TradingEconomics — EU Carbon Permits (CFD tracking the benchmark market, recorded €71.69 on April 3, 2026) | European Commission CBAM Implementing Regulation — first certificate price publication scheduled for April 7, 2026.

Constantin Peters is 23. He grew up on a farm in Münsterland, Germany. He finished his Bachelor in Forestry at Göttingen last summer. Now he's doing his Master's in Erfurt.

In September 2026, he's heading to Canada on a Working Holiday visa. He already has a forestry contractor placement lined up in Nova Scotia.

But he wants more. From February 2027, he's looking for a placement in the sawmill, timber trade, or wood products industry — ideally in British Columbia.

He has hands-on experience from a veneer/sawmill internship. He organized his own visa, his own first job, and reached out to ForestryBrief to find the next one. That kind of initiative is rare at any age.

If you work in the Canadian wood industry — or know someone who does — and can help Constantin find a placement, please reply to this email. I'll make the connection.

I spent the autumn semester of 2008 at Vancouver Island University in Nanaimo on a scholarship. It is still one of the most significant lines in my CV. I know what this kind of experience does for a young forester.

Read the EU wildfire strategy. Find the one paragraph that supports your work.

The full Commission communication is COM(2026) 330 final, published March 25. It's about 30 pages.

Fifteen minutes:

The Commission just handed every European forester a citable source. Most will never read it. The ones who do will own the conversation for the next two years.

Ten chapters. Fifteen tools. €29.

Today's Big Story is about a policy win that took years of patient communication. CEPF didn't get "active forest management" into a Commission strategy by accident. They built the case, showed up at every roundtable, and translated technical reality into political language.

That's the work most forestry organisations don't do well. Chapter 7 of the Playbook gives you the eleven core messages that work. Chapter 9 shows you how to structure stakeholder engagement that actually moves policy.

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Until Thursday!

Wish you all the best: Peter

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