Well, I guess I won my bet (although no one took me up on it) that Lloyd Hines would not be reappointed Minister of Natural Resources in Stephen McNeil’s freshly re-elected government.
The Premier announced the new cabinet today and the DNR post goes to Margaret Miller who served as Minister of Environment in the last 16 months of the first McNeil government (Oct 8, 2013 to May 30, 2017).
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Could a Biodiversity Act help to rein in clearcutting in Nova Scotia?
On emissions: the Nova Scotia carbon price is too low and emissions cap too high; Doelle and Haley suggest that N.S. should let the federal government put their tax in place and absorb the accompanying administrative cost until a proper system can be designed. Continue reading
Even in Protected Areas: Clearcut in lands designated for the Raven Head Protected Area, 2011 (“To negotiate a price within the province’s budget, Wagner Forestry [was] allowed to harvest about one quarter of the Apple Head area”)
I had to remind myself that I wasn’t trespassing, that in fact this was my land, and yours, which these harvesters are only now borrowing. With that context I can be forgiven for my turmoil, developing, as it did, the deeper into this devastation I dared trek.
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The Liberals mustered a narrow majority in the May 30, 2017 election, so they will again be in the driver’s seat.
My immediate question: who will be the Minister of Natural Resources? The answer will provide the first sign of where forests and forestry could be headed in Nova Scotia and whether the Liberals’ commitment to an independent review is genuine. If Lloyd Hines, the Minister of Natural Resources for most of the Liberals’ first term, is reappointed, it will be difficult to take that commitment seriously. Here’s why.
The future of forestry in Nova Scotia?
A lot of Annapolis Co. looked like this in late May, 2017 and there’s more on the way.
“Whatever happened to the resolution by the Annapolis County Council?”
Good question.
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Thx, CR
On Being Asked, Whence Is the Flower?
In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,
I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,
Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,
To please the desert and the sluggish brook.
The purple petals fallen in the pool
Made the black water with their beauty gay;
Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool,
And court the flower that cheapens his array.
Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why
This charm is wasted on the earth and sky,
Tell them, dear, that, if eyes were made for seeing,
Then beauty is its own excuse for Being;
Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!
I never thought to ask; I never knew;
But in my simple ignorance suppose
The self-same power that brought me there, brought you.
–The Rhodora by Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834
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UPDATE (June 3, 2017) I missed this just pre-election Letters and Editorials item in the CH May 30, 2017: an Op-ed by Dale Smith (“The environment shell game“) in which he expresses skepticism about the environmental commitments made by the three major parties during the election campaign.
About the commitment in the Liberal platform “to appoint an independent expert to review our forestry practices to ensure we strike the right balance” he says:
Is the expectation that the proposed independent expert will rule upon and perhaps set aside the opinion and will of Nova Scotians as conveyed through the most extensive resources consultation and review process ever undertaken in Nova Scotia?
And who might be selected as an independent expert? Should he or she be a highly-credentialled forester? If so, and based on past experience, the effective outcome most likely would be carefully crafted recommendations advanced by a wily fox determined to ensure continued access to the henhouse, all in the name of balance.
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Source Forest Harvest Allocation Maps 24 May 2017;
red arrow inserted to highlight blocks near the Gully Lake Wilderness Area for which clearcuts were proposed initially.
(Click on image to enlarge it.)
On Friday May 26, this explanation was sent out to subscribers to notices from the Harvest Plant Map Viewer: Continue reading
A modelling study shows that Protected Areas increase carbon storage, clearcuts reduce carbon storage
Decisions about cutting or not cutting and about how to cut affect carbon storage on our forested landscape.
If the existing and proposed protected areas were managed for forestry they would become a carbon source for the next 130 years for both maximum yield and forestry management with environmental considerations scenarios.
“It’s all around us and it breaks my heart…”
I was particularly struck by the profound sense of sadness conveyed in the voices of two people who conveyed their comments in telephone messages.
Below are transcripts from those messages.