With still no response from L&F to the protests over logging in Mainland Moose Country, the Naturalists’ legally successful lawsuit not withstanding, I read this am that L&F is now looking for a Resource Analyst – Wildlife Biodiversity Modeler (Biologist 3).*
It seems L&F’s response to public concerns is
& On some of the many benefits to be had and to celebrate from not clearcutting our forests and not mindlessly expanding our urban footprints
Posted on Halifax Trails Public Facebook Group, Nov 9, 2020:
Click on image for the CBC story: ‘Completely different, crazy world’ of B.C. tree planting revealed in new documentary · CBC News Nov 7, 2020 “One Million Trees gives viewers a taste of the gruelling job without having to step on the cut block”
An ad was posted on Tuesday Nov 10, 2020 for Manager, Forest Management Planning at NS Lands & Forestry.
From the Advert:
Primary Accountabilities
You will manage the administration and operations that support decision making and policy development of the province’s forests and that contribute to the provincial goals of enhancing biodiversity, ecological sustainability, and economic prosperity.
Qualifications and Experience
Successful candidates will have a Bachelor of Science Degree in Forestry or a related discipline and several years of related experience in forestry operations management, or an acceptable combination of education and experience.
Some pics of this magnificent animal in Cumberland Co. & a racap of its challenging recent history
We are hearing a lot about the Mainland Moose recently, but they are elusive and wary of humans and probably well less than 1% of Nova Scotians have seen them.
Ken Adams, recently retired as Director/Curator of the Fundy Geological Museum in Parrsboro, spends a lot of time observing rocks and wildlife in Cumberland Co.
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HFC Co-ordinator Mike Lancaster was interviewed this morning on CBC Info AM. Click on image to access the archived audio file. Also reported in CBC Post: Forestry coalition calls for halt on some types of harvesting on N.S. Crown land & on CBC Evening News 33-39 mins
From the HFC Press Release (bolding inserted):
Nov. 3, 2020
CLEARCUTTING MUST STOP – HEALTHY FOREST COALITION ALARMED BY ‘CUTTING FRENZY’
Convinced that the government has abandoned its commitment to implement the recommendations of the Independent Review of Forest Practices, the Healthy Forest Coalition (HFC) is calling for ‘a moratorium on all even-aged harvests’ on public lands.
Speaking for HFC, Coordinator Mike Lancaster says that ‘high conservation forests have been lost at an unacceptable rate,’ since Professor William Lahey reported on the review over two years ago. In December 2018 the government accepted the ‘spirit and intent’ of his recommendations. Since then development of new silviculture guides has proceeded extremely slowly, while the Department of Lands and Forestry has allowed harvests to proceed at an increased pace under the old rules. Since the beginning of 2019 the department has received applications for harvesting almost 25,000 ha. of Crown land. Most of these have been approved. There has been a slight increase in approvals for uneven age treatment, but HFC estimates that over 71.6% of these harvests will be ‘even aged’ treatments.
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“Here’s a photo from Oct 12, 2020. Taken in the Tobeatic Wilderness Area! It’s been reported.” @NickKnutsonNS on Twitter Oct 20, 2020
This move to clearcut this crucial connective forest between the Tobeatic and Silver River Wilderness Area is exemplary of the broader issues affecting public forestry in Nova Scotia. There must be a halt to even-aged treatments and the construction of new forestry roads on public land until the new silvicultural guides are finalized. Foresty has it’s place and is a valuable component of our rural economies, this is not it.
The area in question is one of the few places of Nova Scotia that is largely unfragmented by roads. Once new roads are built the impact on the area lasts for many years to come. Doing so facilitates the infiltration of white-tailed deer, poachers, and recreation-based impacts that where they were previously absent, or minimal.
The HFC is calling for three things to occur:
- Deferral of cutting and road building until more review of this area can occur.
- Assessment of Protected Areas potential for connective tissues and the expansion of Silver River Wilderness Area.
- The transferral of responsibility for wildlife and SAR out of forestry portfolio as incidents like this are not acceptable. Species like the mainland moose, teetering on the brink of expiration from Nova Scotia, cannot afford this ongoing loss of habitat.
Make sense. Thx ML & HFC
Links
For a superb overview of the state of our forests in N.S. and N.B., view this video just released on YouTube by N.B. Media Co-op:
*It can be viewed with or without subtitles – to change the current setting, click on the Settings-wheel:
View N.B. Media Co-op post (Oct 24, 2020) for a short biography of Bob B. and links to some related info and articles. The video was produced as “Part of St. Thomas University’s Environmental Praxis Lecture Series, this talk is supported by the NB Media Co-op and RAVEN – Rural Action and Voices for the Environment, a research project based at the University of New Brunswick”.
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Questions begging for answers
UPDATE Oct 22, 2020
“Extinction Rebellion Forest Protectors are camped out NOW, and are committed to stopping this clear cut.” Posted on Annapolis Royal & Area – Environment & Ecology late yesterday
Oct 23: Protesters block logging road over mainland moose protections (audio)
CBC Info AM
UPDATE Oct 20, a.m. related to comments about Irving in SW Nova Scotia, wood going to NB: I just had a phone call from Irving; an Irving rep said that they have no operations in Digby Co., and do not ship logs to N.B. She followed up with an e-mail which explains more precisely why she said the “references to Irving are not accurate”. In her post on a public Facebook group (which I copied verbatim), NN cited the info as “Local information also has it..” and commented “Perhaps it’s not true that Irving is taking the wood from Crown land in Southwest Nova straight to New Brunswick”, so I was Ok with citing it here without verifying it separately; in turn I appreciate the clarification from Irving, which came without agitation.
UPDATE Oct 20, a.m. (related to section below on “Cutting in Moose Habitat”):
On CBC Info AM Today (Oct 18, 2020). Click on image for link to Info AM Twitter Page. Listen to archived interview
Also view
– “Richard Amero shows the moose track by the side of a logging road on crown land near the Tobeatic Wilderness Area.”
– “Picture of moose cow and calf taken by Richard Amero in Nov 2018, in this same area.”
– “Here’s a photo from Oct 12, 2020. Taken in the Tobeatic Wilderness Area! It’s been reported.”
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ORIGINAL POST
A common scene in Annapolis Co. (Photo in 2017).
Annapolis County shoulders a disproportionate share of the logging on Crown lands in southwest NS, with few of the benefits accruing to WestFor’s 13 member companies, none of them based in Annapolis Co.*
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*I went to the WestFor website to check the listing of company members and found a glossy new feel-good website but that it no longer provides that info. So I went to the web archive to check it – the item listing Members is for May 5, 2017.
Annapolis County Council has repeatedly tried to gain more say on logging within the County, requesting exclusion from Westfor logging, proposing that they manage an old forest block as a cloud forest with thinnings to be used for local heating, requesting an “Indefinite moratorium on glyphosate spraying for the entire county”, all to no avail. (In Ontario municipalities can specify cutting practices.)
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Old trees support biodiversity and store carbon. Raymond Plourde spotted this old, wind-twisted red maple during a hike through Old Forest by Sandy Lake (Bedford, N.S.) on Sep 15, 2019. When such trees – not usable for lumber – are harvested in clearcuts, we lose old forest biodiversity. Typically they are chipped for burning, instantly releasing all of the tree’s stored carbon as atmospheric carbon dioxide and contributing to global warming.
Raymond Plourde says that we can move to 14% protected with a stroke of the Premier’s pen. Then it’s time to go further.
A spate of recent local or locally relevant news underscores a basic conflict that confronts many jurisdictions globally in 2020: the ‘need’ to exploit our natural resources for short term gain or simple economic or even human survival but at the cost of the ecological integrity of Planet Earth as we have known it.
One ‘news cluster’ (Sep 28-29, 2000) involved climate change and the rush to generate power by use of forest “wastes” (including old trees not suitable for lumber). That was overlapped (Sep 28-Oct 5, 2020) by a news cluster related to biodiversity losses globally and locally.
Jim Vibert’s piece in the Chronicle Herald & Journal Pioneer, Mother Nature’s on the run in Nova Scotia encapsulates the recent history of our failure to address the Biodiversity issue. It’s definitely worth reading the whole item, some extracts from it are attached below.
In a CBC Info AM interview on Oct 2 (“Abbreviated Transcript” here), Meghan Leslie (ex- NDP MLA for Halifax and now CEO of the World Wildlife Fund International) and Raymond Plourde (Wilderness Coordinator for the Ecology Action Centre) discussed where we are globally and locally in regard to biodiversity losses. Both emphasized the importance of protected areas in stemming such losses.
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It seems the social license to spray NS forests has expired
Extinction Rebellion Nova Scotia Photo
On Don’t Spray Us – Nova Scotia Action (Facebook Events Page)
Hants/Lunenburg County
UPDATE Fri Sep 25, 2020, ~4pm
by Extinction Rebellion Nova Scotia
Good news for this season;NS Dept of Environment has informed us definitively that there will be NO further spraying of aerial herbicide on private land in Nova Scotia this fall. The area we are currently occupying in Hants County has not and will not be sprayed this year. Citizens standing up together make a difference.
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