VICTORIA — The British Columbia government says cutting red tape has allowed provincial pulp mills to more than double their use of timber salvaged from forest fires.

The Ministry of Forests says in a statement that mills processed more than one million cubic metres of wildfire chips in 2024-25, up from 500,000 cubic metres in 2023, and representing about seven per cent of all processed wood.

Forests Minister Ravi Parmar says in the statement that B.C. can’t let anything go to waste, including logs that have been burned in wildfires, and his government is taking the wildfire damage “and turning it into jobs for communities and paycheques for workers.”

The statement says pulp mills rarely accepted burned timber before 2022, but both government and industry recognized the opportunity of turning wildfire-affected fibre into wood chips.

It says that faster permitting and stronger partnerships between government and industry made it even easier to use that type of timber and the work will continue in 2026.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 23, 2025.

Wolfgang Depner, The Canadian Press