Chronicle Herald Editorial Team with Premier McNeil
View VIDEO: McNeil sits down to talk health care, environment, forestry Chronicle Herald, Dec 21, 2017.
Jim Vibert’s assessment of the Premier’s views in today’s CH, which I read after making an abbreviated transcript of the Forestry section of the interview (below), rings true.
Recent aerial photo by Scott Leslie of the East Kemptville mine near Yarmouth, across the 203 highway from the Tobeatic Wilderness Area. Although it closed in 1992 and it’s been 25 years, it’s hard to see any evidence of remediation.
Click on photo for larger version
Sometimes my attempt to provide 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″ (all admittedly biased) can be challenging. The last 10 days have been one of those times.
Here are some of the items that have caught my attention over the few days since my last post.
Mining versus protected areas, continued
Protesters object to development of Cape Breton mountain sacred to Mi’kmaq National Post, Dec 16, 2017
(The mountain) is our sacred place and it is home of our sacred being, to destroy that place for profit is the same thing as me going over to the Vatican and chipping off the gold, and the silvers and the rubies and the diamonds … and maybe taking a couple of Michelangelos home. – Elizabeth Marshall of Eskasoni First Nation
Also: Protesters gather, slow traffic to object mining projects on Kellys Mountain in Victoria County
Jeremy Fraser in Cape Breton Post, Dec 16, 2017.
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Einar Christensen offers “A hierarchy of sustainable forestry” & wonders about the make-up of DNR’s Science Advisory Committee
Looking like “a scene out of Second World War Europe”
Writing an Op-ed in the Chronicle Herald (OPINION: A hierarchy of sustainable forestry), he comments that forest management in Nova Scotia “has been deteriorating for years but was really helped along by the former minister, Lloyd Hines”. He cites Hines’ opinion piece, A scientific approach to logging (CH, Nov. 5, 2016), as evidence.
Einar notes that Minister Hines “seemed to trivialize the role of clear cutting large areas of the province. Anyone who has flown over Nova Scotia would have seen first-hand how much of our previously forested landscape looks like a scene out of Second World War Europe. In many areas of the province, if you walk 50 metres away from a road or stream, what looks like solid forest turns into a desolated area that cannot support the forestry industry, let alone wildlife of any kind.”
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One response to MANS: Rally For Kluscap Dec 16th, 2017 – scroll to the bottom of this post for more details.
Their photo evidence is quite a study in mis-representation. The GPS coordinates for the photos are not given. For those that could genuinely be in a Protected Area or Nature Reserve, the cuts would have been made before the area was formally designated; they are not continuing. Some are power line cuts.
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Four items in Tree Frog Forestry News today (Dec 11th, 2017) illustrate that concerns about over-harvesting of forests are hardly restricted to Nova Scotia.
Section of land just south of New Glascow, Nova Scotia, from map at forests.foundryspatial.com that visualizes forest changes in Canada from 1985 to 2011. I couldn’t find any equivalent to the density of harvests shown above outside of Nova Scotia.
Click on image for larger version.
LETTER: Timber companies have had their day in the sun
From reader Nick Chatten in BC Local News Dec 8, 2017:
Regarding the logging in watersheds, I advise everyone to have a look at the Google maps with the satellite view. Pan around the West Kootenays to areas like Nancy Greene park and you will see a lot of harvest. These guys have had their day in the sun and now they want to tip toe through people’s back yards. When I was in the Selkirk College Forestry program in 1986 we learned of the fall-down effect. Slocan Forest Products (remember them?) learned this effect and now they are a memory. Eventually, the mature timber that can be put through a sawmill diminishes because they are logging so hard.
I have to laugh that the government considers we are logging in a sustainable fashion: utter hogwash! We are harvesting fiber faster than it can grow back. Those trees WAY up the mountain on higher elevations will need 100 years or more to come back…These trees grew on shallow soils in a harsh environment. Sometimes they never come back, just a stunted, planted pine growing where it shouldn’t.
A picture is [sometimes] worth a thousand words; this is one of those times
Scott Leslie, a renowned Nova Scotia author and nature/wildlife photographer, was the guest speaker at the Thursday Dec 7, 2017 meeting of the Halifax Field Naturalists (HFN) which I attended; his topic: Untamed Atlantic Canada.
Scott’s photographs and reading from his latest book (Untamed Atlantic Canada) held us spellbound.
After the final questions about his presentation he asked if we would be interested in seeing some of his aerial views of clearcuts in Annapolis Co. and Cape Breton. HFN members and generally most of the visitors attending their meetings (which are open to the public) have a keen interest in forests and forestry, so there was little hesitation. We again sat spellbound, this time by some much less comforting pictures than those we had just seen.
Scott gave HFN a selection of the aerial photos to post on their website. The photos “speak volumes” as they say, in this case the volumes of wood that have been scraped wholesale off of our landscapes, leaving wildlife without homes, burning up carbon in the soil and who knows what else – even though the regulations, and in some cases even FSC standards, are being followed.
It seems to come down to no pipe, no plant.
The effluent from the proposed new pulp effluent treatment plant would be released in the Northumberland Strait at approximately location X on the Google map above.
Click on image to enlarge (from Google Earth)
UPDATE Dec 12, 2017: DeMONT: Journalist, miners shabbily treated by big business by John Demont in the Chronicle Herald, Dec 12, 2017.
& in the same issue of the CH, a deAdder Editorial Cartoon; board members hold copies of The Mill, and their PR guy points to a graph of book sales on the smart board… “Here is where we at Northern Pulp tried to quash interest in this book”. (An earlier Bruce Mackinon ed cartoon featured a lobster in pot of pulp effluent.)
& Northumberland Fishermen’s Association will draft proposal opposing Northern Pulp’s proposed effluent treatment facility
Sam Macdonald in The News Dec 12, 2017
UPDATE Dec 12, 2017: Two items in the Chronicle Herald
Sales, interest in The Mill rise after Northern Pulp tries to suppress book Report by Francis Campbell
Northern Pulp: with public money comes accountability Columnist Opinion by Dan Leger
& this one a couple of days ago in The Guardian (PEI): P.E.I. fisherman says meeting increased concerns over effluent dump in Northumberland Strait by Jim Day Dec 8, 2017.
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Three open houses held earlier this past week (Dec 4,5 & 6) to inform the public and specific stakeholder groups about the proposed new pulp mill effluent treatment seem not to have convinced the people whose livelihoods and homesteads are most directly affected that all is OK.
Nor did some of the Mill’s apparent behind-the-scenes tactics. Extracts from some of the responses in the local press are cited below.
First Nation, fishermen distrust Northern Pulp treatment plan
Francis Campbell in the Chronicle Herald Dec 8, 2017
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A letter in Voice of the People from Helga Guderley reminds us of Nova Scotia’s greatest assets for removing carbon from the atmosphere:
Wood volumes in a piece of SW Nova Scotia (above)
and in a piece of central NS (below)
…the best technology for reducing atmospheric CO2 was invented long ago. Trees, grasses, marine and terrestrial plants sequester atmospheric CO2 very effectively using methods perfected over millions of years. All we need to do to use this wonderfully evolved process is to keep or, even better, increase our forest cover.
Perhaps Nova Scotia could outlaw clearcutting and promote selection harvesting. Perhaps Nova Scotia could integrate carbon sequestration by forests into our cap-and-trade market. Perhaps Bill Lahey’s review of forestry practices could integrate the explicit benefits provided by standing, living trees into the decisions about whether and how trees should be harvested. – Helga Guderley Old-fashioned CO2 removal (CH, Dec 8, 2017)
The effluent from the proposed new pulp effluent treatment plant would be released in the Northumberland Strait at approximately location X on the Google map above.
Click on image to enlarge (from Google Earth)
Fishers are concerned about impacts on lobster, crab, scallop, herring, and mackerel fisheries.
I’ve lived, gone to school, worked and volunteered in Pictou County almost my entire life. I grew up on a dairy farm in Scotsburn, learned about forestry at my father’s side and spent many a day and night on a fishing boat hauling lobster traps, shucking scallops and shaking a herring net, with my stepfather, grandfather and various other family and friends who own fishing gear.
On the mill effluent issue, she comments:
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So I guess it’s not surprising that some of them, like a few elder citizens, harbour some memories of the Halifax Explosion of Dec 6, 1917. View A century after the Halifax explosion, grim reminders can still be found in trees by Meagan Campbell in Maclean’s Magazine December 5, 2017
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