My attempt to provide posts on the home page “as a record of events, news and opinions on the subject of forests and forestry in Nova Scotia as they unfold, beginning on June 21, 2016″, has proved challenging and I have not always been able to keep up.
So I am making a slight change in tack. On the page In the News, I will be listing links to news items under the dates those are published, without comments. Some of those will also be listed on the page Independent Review, and some will be topics of posts of the Home Page.
So About this Site>All Posts, provides a more or less complete archive of news related to forests and forestry in Nova Scotia Jun 21, 2016 to Jun 10, 2018,most with some comment; thereafter, the archive list will be on In the News, without comment.
There will still posts on the Home Page, but I will make a post only when I think I have some comment that adds to a news story, or on a topic not currently in the news. They will less frequent, perhaps 1/week versus an average of 4/week up to this point. All posts will still be listed on the page About this site>All Posts.
This change in tack will, I hope, allow me more time to follow up on important topics that are not receiving much attention otherwise, e.g., as in a recent post on cats versus clearcutting as threats to forest birds.
I especially want to take more time to investigate, comprehend and write about forestry, forest products and GHGs about which the science, complex in itself, has been highly politicized. I think that the complexity of the topic has been an impediment to more intensive coverage of the topic in the press, and I am concerned about where we could be headed.
Over the past year, nsforestnotes.ca has developed a quasi-symbiotic interaction with Woods and Waters Nova Scotia, a Facebook site hosted by Mike Parker. Mike’s many books about NS wilderness and forestry and historical records of the same are well known to Nova Scotians. As well as being more consistent than I in keeping track of news items and social media posts about forests and forestry, WWNS also hosts and moderates discussion, which I do not do on nsforestnotes.ca.
Mike/WWNS makes posts linking to most of my posts as they appear, and often some constructive back and forth discussion follows on WWNS. I sometimes copy some of that discussion on to the bottom of the related post on nsforestnotes.ca.
Mike and I have no formal agreement or collaboration in our respective endavours, but I expect this informally developed relationship will continue. I have met Mike only once, fleetingly, at a funeral (guess which one), and any messages we exchange are pretty short. But it’s clear that we approach forestry and forestry issues with similar and where they differ, complementary, perspectives.
I guess what the nsforestnotes.ca blog/website contributes to the mix is the perspective of a naturalist/scientist, a readily searchable site, and links to a lot of reference materials organized under various categories.
I set up this blog/website on June 21, 2016, now almost two years ago. Some of the WordPress stats:
Posts: 403
Views: 85,252
Visitors: 39,443
Best overall day: 609
Followers: On WordPress.com 15, via e-mail 111, via Twitter 461.
From Statcounter (code is placed on most of my posts), I can see that most of the visitors are from Nova Scotia. Under “Host Name/Web Page/Referrers” several news organizations, federal and provincial government agencies and universities are regularly cited. Visitor locations are throughout Nova Scotia. A curious visitor early on and every now and then is identified as Canada Department of Defence. I have noted that visitor after I make a post that includes a Google Earth map showing clearcutting close to the Halifax Airport – ‘nice to know that our security people are on top of things, even if they don’t hide their ID!
I continue to look at the nsforestnotes.ca as a place to organize links and information about forests and forestry in Nova Scotia for my own purposes. Writing blog posts forces me to be more thorough in evaluating and thinking about information on forests and forestry in NS than I would be otherwise.
News sources or news compilers that I regularly consult or receive postings from include the Chronicle Herald, Tree Frog Forestry News, Google Alerts (Forests, Forestry, Nova Scotia), Woods and Waters Nova Scotia, Halifax Examiner, and every now and then I check out a range of NS newspapers and websites of various organizations (e.g., as cited under Forest-Friendly Forestry and Forestry Associations.
I am happy that that some of the web pages and posts are being found of interest to others and perhaps are contributing incrementally to constructive discussion and, hopefully, resolution of issues surrounding forests and forestry in NS.