November Natural Gas Rights
Sales Nearly $20 Million
The November 2009 land rights sale resulted in nearly $20 million in bonus bids, bringing the calendar year to date total to $720.6 million. See the News Release.

B.C. Adopts New Greenhouse Gas Threshold
B.C. will roll out new regulations next year that will require all entities emitting more than 10,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases annually to publicly report their emissions. Environment Minister Barry Penner says the move gives the province the lowest emissions threshold in Canada. About 200 B.C. facilities will be required to report annually under the new regulation, which goes into effect Jan. 1, 2010. See the News Story as reported by the CBC, or the News Release.

B.C. Judge To Head Probe Into
Salmon Stock Collapse
British Columbia Supreme Court Justice Bruce Cohen will chair a federal commission of inquiry into the collapse of Fraser River sockeye salmon runs, Trade Minister Stockwell Day announced this month. This past summer the Department of Fisheries and Oceans closed the Fraser to commercial fishing for the third consecutive year after DFO predictions of a sockeye run exceeding 10 million fish failed to materialize. Only a vestigial run of about a million fish migrated back to the river to spawn. See the Full Story as reported by the National Post.

New Regulation For Exotic
Animal Ownership
B.C. residents who own an exotic animal, or are thinking of purchasing one, are remnided that they should be applying for a permit in order to keep that animal. New regulations and permit application requirements come into effect on April 1, 2010 to regulate the ownership of the most dangerous exotic animals such as: tigers, lions, venomous and poisonous snakes and other large reptiles. See the Information Bulletin.

Climategate - Has the Science
been Compromised?
News recently broke that a hacker had broken in to the computer systems used by the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia in Britain, obtaining more than 1,000 e-mails and 3,000 documents. The material, which covers a period of more than a decade, has led many to conclude that climate scientists associated with the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and various government agencies have been cooking the books to make the case for man-made global warming. See the Full Story as posted by the National Post.

B.C. Not Cutting Export Wood
To Lengths That The Chinese Prefer
British Columbia has only a small slice of the growing Chinese lumber market because most forest companies are shipping lumber cut to North American — not Chinese — specifications. Distributors, sawmillers and lumber remanufacturers alike say they love Canadian wood and would buy even more of it if they could get it in the lengths they prefer. See the Full Story as posted by Vancouver Sun.