Category Archives: Department of Natural Resources

Forestry: Chipping our forests on the cheap

Public land and wildlife continue to be destroyed, yet are absent from industry costs

Pulp companies use softwoods like spruce to manufacture paper products. They obtain leases to cut wood on Crown land, in forests owned by the public.

The leases allow them to cut hardwood trees on Crown land.

When other energy prices, such as natural gas, soar, it becomes economic to burn hardwoods in the Point Tupper biomass plant to produce electricity, at an efficiency rate of less than 21.5 per cent. To put this in perspective, a woodstove can have an efficiency rate about 80 per cent to produce heat.

Margins go up and margins go down, but one important aspect not factored into this equation as corporations adapt to profit, is the cost to wildlife. Animals are crushed under heavy equipment as they cower in their dens. Songbirds made their homes in these forests.

They are nowhere on the financial statement. The cost to wildlife can be the ultimate price…

Read the rest of  this terrific article on forestry which our friend and FON Conservation Award winner Bob Bancroft recently published in the Herald: http://thechronicleherald.ca/business/1543413-commentary-chipping-our-forests-on-the-cheap


 

Also a friendly reminder that if you haven’t renewed your Friends of Nature membership this would be a great time to do so. You can renew or join on our website! It’s important to our conservation efforts that we are able to tell politicians we represent a large number of Nova Scotians.

Many thanks for your interest and support.

Syd Dumaresq, Chair Friends of Nature.

Presentation to the Independent Review of Forest Practices

Yesterday, December 7, 2017 a delegation from Friends of Nature made a presentation to the Independent Review of Forest Practices, led by Professor Bill Lahey. Our presentation was well received and resulted in a healthy discussion with Mr Lahey.

A copy of our brief is follows . . .

December 7, 2017
Presentation to Bill Lahey

Ken MacRury – Woodlot owner
Brad Armstrong – Conservation Director, Friends of Nature & woodlot owner
Syd Dumaresq –Chair, Friends of Nature

The current state of the forestry in Nova Scotia is reminiscent of the coal and steel industry that existed in the 1950’s and 60’s when valiant efforts on the part of all levels of government were made to save a dying industry that had served its time and was no longer viable. The industry died, not because Nova Scotia ran out of coal but because it was no longer able to compete in the global economy. We suspect that something similar is happening with the forest industry. We believe that both Stora and Bowater saw the future and took the actions they did. Stora moved to Argentina where trees grow five times faster, labour rates are lower, taxes are lower, and supply lines are shorter. The two remaining pulp and paper plants are being propped up with government subsidies which are likely to disappear.

As others have said, in the 1800’s Nova Scotia was producing the finest lumber in North America, for ship building, for export to Europe and the USA; by the early 1900’s the big trees were mostly gone so we started the pulp and paper mills making newsprint, toilet paper and eventually super calendar paper, mostly for export; and in this century the supply of trees has become so constricted that we are reduced to making biomass, mostly for export. The trees for the two remaining paper mills and for the saw mills are being supplied at rock bottom stumpage fees from Crown lands or from private woodlands where supply most often depends on a rural poverty motivator.

Friends of Nature believe the forest industry is dying in its present form, it’s just that most people have not yet realized that fact. Instead of discussing a paradigm shift the discussion is about minor shifts that may or may not extend the current situation.

This province has the capacity to grow wonderful large trees of high value but only if we give the forests time. The race to the bottom is being fueled by a desperate search for profits in an industry that is becoming more uneconomic every year.

A paradigm shift will not be easy or painless, jobs will be lost, companies will go bankrupt, but overall the province will emerge a better place and an industry will be rebuilt. Friends of Nature suggest that the Province should look at the sunsetting of current forestry practices over a long term renewal program for the forest. The first to go should be whole tree harvesting which should immediately stop on all crown lands, next would be clearcutting, say 25 years to be completely eliminated on all crown lands. After that the province would allow only selective harvesting on crown lands with a size or age range for trees harvested.

The main purpose of crown land would be to create a carbon sequestration forest that would be the lungs of the province, taking in carbon and breathing out oxygen.

The province would be able to sell carbon credits derived from the crown lands on a regulated market, which would help finance the transition from machine intensive clear cutting to selective forestry.
Nova Scotia would become a world leader in forestry.

There was a very interesting article in the Herald in November by Soren Bondrup- Nielsen, a retired professor from Acadia, which supplies interesting support documentation for such a radical transformation.

He provides real numbers. When we look at two of them, jobs in the forest industry and volume harvested, we see that employment in the industry has fallen from a high of 12,000 in the late 1990’s to about 5,500 today and we suspect this is still falling. The volume harvested in cubic meters hit a high point in the late 1990’s of six million cubic meters and has decreased to 3.5 million cubic meters in 2016.

Those numbers seem to speak of an industry in rapid decline and would again seem to mirror what happened in the coal and steel industry during its decline and eventual failure. Prof. Bondrup-Nielsen advocates the growth of large diameter trees and carbon sequestration in the forests of Nova Scotia which would allow for a supply of large logs harvested selectively for the value added sawmill industry and the sale of carbon credits under a cap-and-trade system.

Friends of Nature believe those objectives would be supported by most Nova Scotians.

During the transition period noted above we strongly recommend:

• Implementation of FSC certification on all crown lands. The only large amount of
wood left, except on private lands, is in south western NS. This is part of the former Bowater lands that was already FSC certified. With FSC certification we, the public, has input in all the harvest plans ( After all we own the crown lands). FSC is a much better standard of forestry, eg bigger buffers, longer harvest rotations, public input and protection of the forest canopy.
• An immediate halt to forest biomass for generation of electricity
• An immediate reduction of 50% in clearcutting on crown land
• A halt to the export of wood pellets for biomass
• More input from indigenous peoples in forest policy

Friends of Nature Conservation Society

Letter to the Premier: Carbon Credits for Forests

long_lake_forest_800

The Honourable Stephen McNeil

Office of the Premier
7th Floor, One Government Place
1700 Granville Street
Halifax, Nova Scotia
B3J 1X5

March 1, 2017

Dear Mr. Premier:

I am writing to you on behalf of the Friends of Nature to express our appreciation for one of the steps your government has taken to combat the serious threat of climate change. Late last year you announced that Nova Scotia would be implementing a Cap-and-Trade system for our province. We welcome that decision.

A well designed climate change policy would position our provincial private woodland owners and our crown forests to have a powerful effect in reducing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere by using our forests to store carbon.

It is our hope that Nova Scotia will adopt a Cap-and-Trade regime that will allow woodlot owners to manage their lands specifically to store more carbon and receive payments from a regulated market. To be most effective woodlot owners must have access to the larger Cap-and-Trade markets of California, Ontario and Quebec. These three jurisdictions are known collectively as the Western Climate Initiative.

Beginning in 2018, exporting carbon offsets could sustainably bring $50 million per year to the rural areas of this province. That amount would increase to an estimated $100 million by 2030, a powerful rural economic development initiative. All of that revenue would come from private woodlots in Nova Scotia only. Should Crown Lands be added to the equation the revenue to the province would be substantial.

Although carbon storage would be the major initiative, we would still continue to cut wood, just not all at once. Current carbon agreements call for a retained tree stocking of 20 cords per acre over an entire woodlot. Our provincial Department of Natural Resources is increasingly concerned about disengaged woodlot owners who are not managing their woodlots or allowing their timber to contribute to the provincial wood industry. A Cap-and-Trade program would not only support rural wellbeing but would also help the forest products sector.

To summarize, the Friends of Nature supports a climate change strategy for Nova Scotia that creates a market for carbon credits using a Cap-and-Trade system linked to the Western Climate Initiative. We would welcome further dialogue with your office on this very important topic.

Yours truly,
Syd Dumaresq
Chair, Friends of Nature Conservation Society.

Satellites Reveal The Clearcut Truth

Dear Friends,

In case you missed it, here is a link to an excellent article from Saturday’s Herald speaking against current forestry practices in Nova Scotia by Donna Crossland:

>Satellites reveal forest loss is more serious in N.S. than the government would have you believe<

Donna is a member of the Healthy Forest Coalition. Friends of Nature is proud to be a founding member of this coalition.

>I’ve also attached a PDF version of the article here.<

Yours,
Syd Dumaresq
Chair, Friends of Nature

long_lake_forest_800

Does Forestry in Nova Scotia Have a Future?

Dear Friends:

The letter below is from Geoffrey May, who is Elizabeth’s brother,  provides the best summary I have seen to date on the sad state of our forest industry and the industry regulators. Please help to spread the word.

Best wishes
Syd Dumaresq, Chair
Friends of Nature

long_lake_forest_800Dear Premier McNeil,

I have certain sympathy for your government’s inability to deliver decent forest policy. The problem stems from decades of UNB/Irving forestry school, which has trained most provincial foresters, and most forestry professionals in private and public service. These professional foresters know next to nothing about forest ecology, and have no understanding for forest structure or function. This anti-science, anti-nature forest management that has been pushed by UNB and the Irvings has resulted in reduced forest employment, reduced forest value, and destruction of non-commercial forest products.

Forests are not landscape constants, but result from ecological variables. Our temperate forests hold as much biological diversity as the great rain forests, the big difference between tropical rain forests and temperate forests, is that tropical forests have most of their biodiversity above the ground, where as our forest has most of its biodiversity in soil microorganisms.

It is in the below ground web of life that nutrients are fixed for use, that the trees of the forest are in communication. These subterranean communities are essential for forest health, yet they are destroyed utterly by the equipment used to harvest forests, rutting and compaction from equipment is a major challenge for ecosystems.

Our forest harvest is conducted by large mechanized equipment, which can only be profitably employed, by conducting large contiguous clear-cuts. However, if we managed our forests to preserve ecosystem function and maximize employment, we would ban clear-cut logging and the equipment that demands it. The current system benefits Irvings and other corporate forest destruction because reducing employment is one way to control supply costs. The current system leaves forest contractors 100% dependent on good relations with the mills who control the crown leases. Contractors needing to meet huge payments aren’t going to concern themselves with the damage they do to meet those payments, and DNR has no employees who can recognize it either.

Clear-cutting is based on the concept of forest rotation. Forest rotation is an idea that has no basis in ecology, and exists in direct opposition to what the science shows us. What science says is that forests do not rotate, they precede through successional changes to stable state, climax, or “Old Growth”, which contains all other successional stages within it. Clear-cutting represents a unique ecological challenge in that no other disaster removes the entire above ground forest structure for processing off site.

In addition to compacting and rutting of forest soils, clear-cutting exposes forest soils to direct sunlight, wind, and rain, which increases the loss of nutrients from clear-cut areas. In the forest, large woody material is converted by insects, fungi and bacteria into complex forest soils (one way that nature sequesters carbon). In a clear-cut, large woody material is desiccated, it dries out, is not home to a complex community, and the carbon is released back into the atmosphere.

Forest seedlings never form natural root systems and therefore never fully enter into the forest community. In addition to being expensive, plantations are not forests; they are brittle ecosystems, prone to insect attack, vulnerable to wind. The seedlings will require nitrogen, nitrogen is present in the soil, but needs to be “fixed” into a useable form for trees to use. In our forests the bacteria that fixes nitrogen is closely associated with pioneer hardwoods. Pioneer hardwoods serve many useful functions in attempting to reclaim the forest. They protect seedlings from excessive sunlight, wind, rain, and snow. Pioneer hardwoods help stabilize the soils, the water table, and create micro-climates that buffer extremes of heat and cold benefitting seedlings. They do not compete for nutrients or water (as the UNB/Irving School claims). Herbiciding these hardwoods does not help softwood seedlings, and there is no science that supports the theory that removing the pioneer hardwoods brings the seedlings to maturity any sooner. In fact, there is science showing that the yields from plantations rarely reach the levels from the harvest of the natural forest they replace, and none to support the forestry models that plantations can double the fibre productivity that is used to justify excessive logging.

Recent science, which I sent you this past winter, showed that in Europe the conversion of mixed wood forests to conifer plantations is a driver of global warming. The carbon stored did not offset the reduced albedo effect. Clear-cut logging is, of course, another driver of global warming. Land use changes, like clearcutting, account for 20%-30% of CO2 emissions. This was recognized by science over 25 years ago, yet we continue to harvest our forest as if climate change wasn’t happening.

All our environment and economic policies in Nova Scotia appear caught in a time warp, a vacuum. The current Herbicide spray program is based on the assumption that there will be a market for wood pulp in 60 years. It should be obvious that there won’t be. The Alton Gas project similarly assumes continued demand for, and supply of natural gas and there won’t be, unless mountains of science on climate change are all dead wrong.

Regarding Herbicides, years ago Japanese doctors were puzzled as to why patients who had deliberately ingested Round-up herbicide died. According to MDS they shouldn’t have died. They discovered that the surfactant used was 400 times as toxic as glyphosate, and that it was the polyoxyethyleneamine that allowed glyphosate to penetrate the cell wall. In registering Roundup, only the toxicity of glyphosate is considered.

We either change course and embrace a low carbon economy or there won’t be any economy at all in 60 years. Where does oxygen come from in a world at 6C Anthropogenic Global Warming?
If there is a future for Nova Scotia, it lies in accepting the reality of our situation. Forest policy should maximize employment in the forest while maximizing carbon storage. Selection logging is less energy intensive and can be conducted with a minimum of ecological impact and can increase forest stocking while increasing forest production, and there isn’t a single DNR employee working on developing selection logging appropriate for Nova Scotia.

We either embrace the future or we lose it, and right now, we are throwing the future away, and your policies are accelerating the pointless destruction of our future.

Why not make your mark? Actually make a difference in this world and do the right thing? Why not try?

Sincerely
Geoffrey May
Margaree Harbour

Letter to the Editor: “NSP biomass project raising green concerns”

January 13, 2015
Halifax Chronicle Herald

Letter to the Editor,

Congratulations on your excellent article “NSP biomass project raising green concerns” of last Friday, January 9. In the interest of adding fuel to the fire I would like to point out that the 2,790 hectares that will be cut each and every year to feed the biomass boiler at Point Tupper translates to 6,894 acres for us old guys which is 10.77 square miles or all the forest in a three and one quarter mile by three and one quarter mile square. Continue reading