From jobs.novascotia.ca
Resource Specialist
Date: Apr 1, 2019
Apply By: 4/15/2019
Lands and Forestry
Resource Specialist, Permanent, TRURO“As the Resource Specialist, you are part of a multi-disciplinary Integrated Resource Management (IRM) natural resource/land use planning team. Using your unique modelling expertise and leadership skills, you will develop and provide resource analysis for the Crown land IRM planning process and wood supply forecasts for forested lands…
You will work collaboratively with staff on Crown land use planning in order to meet the goals and objectives identified by multiple stakeholders (including public, government and industry). You will facilitate the development of innovative approaches to resource analysis by evaluating current practices and procedures and recommending changes. You will respond to inquiries and requests for information related to integrated resource management for a wide range of clients including provincial, federal and municipal governments, First Nations, forestry communities, environmental groups, special interest groups, the public and universities…
You possess a high degree of scientific problem-solving, independent professional judgement and initiative when addressing complex and sensitive forestry issues. Your excellent analytical skills, high-level abstract thinking and decision-making abilities will be essential in this role…
You have effective organizational and planning skills and the ability to deal with multiple ongoing projects and shifting priorities with minimal supervision and often under very stringent time constraints…
…As the successful candidate you will have a Bachelor’s degree in Natural Science related program plus 6 years experience in forest resource modelling or a Masters Degree in Natural Science program and 4 years of related experience. An equivalent combination of education and experience will be considered.”
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A tall order indeed.
One wonders if L&F is still firm in its conviction that implementing the Lahey recommendations would not reduce the supply of wood from Crown lands:
…And while Lahey predicted less clear cutting would lead to a reduction of Crown land wood supply of 10 to 20 per cent, Rankin disagreed.
“We believe that we can sustainably grow this industry.” – CBC Dec 3, 2018
As usual, don’t expect any info on who L&F hires, qualifications, what he or she does, annual reports, project updates etc.
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From the Lahey Report:
85. On wood supply, the Review team conducted a preliminary analysis of the impact that proposed changes for DNR s ecosystem based system of management would have on wood supply.35 That analysis suggests a short term reduction in wood harvest from Crown land of between 10 and 20 per cent. It also suggests that the reduction cannot be addressed in the short term by shifting production either to high production sites on Crown land, including plantations, or to plantations on private land. More broadly, the analysis indicates that the reduction can be addressed by increased harvesting on other private lands, given that the sustainable harvest level (as estimated by DNR) is currently above actual harvest levels. The issue will be its economic availability and the cost of procurement and of harvesting. Further scenarios should be run, particularly to determine the impact on wood supply from Crown land of different levels of required retention on Crown land; that is, within the proposed 5 30 per cent range.
86. Otherwise, the Review team did not have the opportunity to complete the kind of analysis of my recommendations that industry urged me to complete. If such an analysis is part of the consideration of my recommendations, it should look at benefits as well as costs and it should look at both broadly, including ecological and social considerations as well as economic ones and consider all three in the long as well as the short term. These should be compared to the costs and benefits of current forest practices, again taking ecological and social as well as economic outcomes into account for both the short and the longer term. The analysis should be completed openly and transparently. This will not only ensure its credibility but help to avoid a flawed analysis. It will, for example, prevent the kind of discrepancy that occurred in the past when DNR commissioned a review of the cost to industry of the goal of reducing clearcutting to 50 per cent or less of harvesting in five years; instead of analyzing the impact of a reduction in the percentage of harvesting done by clearcutting, it analyzed the impact of a 50 per cent reduction in the volume of harvesting, a very different thing. Openness and transparency will also help to ensure that the analysis is conducted on the basis of fair, defensible, known, and openly stated assumptions.
87. Specifically, if there is to be a cost analysis of recommendations that limit or reduce clearcutting on Crown land outside of plantations, there should be a parallel analysis of the socio economic and ecological costs of current harvesting practices on those Crown lands. For the reasons given in the preceding paragraph, this analysis should be conducted openly and transparently. This will ensure that there is clarity and accountability for the tradeoffs being made among economic, social, and environmental factors in decisions based on a costs/benefits analysis of my recommendations.
88. An acceptable alternative would be to simply get on with the implementation of the recommendations contained in this report, dedicating the analytical capacity that would otherwise go to this kind of cost/benefit analysis to the work of identifying, designing, and testing options for making the change to ecological forestry that is right for Nova Scotia. On this approach, one of the areas of focus should be options for mitigating the impact on the forest industry of implementing changes in how forestry is practised in Nova Scotia, particularly on Crown lands, other than delaying the implementation of those changes.