Nature Nova Scotia President Bob Bancroft and Executive Director Becky Parker recently sent this letter to Minister of Natural Resources and Renewables Tory Rushton and Minister of Environment and Climate Change Timothy Halman on behalf of the board and our membership, outlining our concerns for both the slow progress towards promised ecological forestry reforms and still pending protected areas under the now outdated protected areas strategy.
You can help us drive the message home by writing to your MLA, the Ministers, and Premier Tim Houston about these issues.
For more on the need to protect 20% of Nova Scotia’s lands and waters by 2030, check out our Make Room for Nature page. For more about the citizen-proposed protected areas listed in our letter and for information on petitions, visit Save Our Old Forests.
“Dec 15, 2024
Minister Tory Rushton
Department of Natural Resources, 3rd Floor, Founders Square, 1701 Hollis Street,, P.O. Box 698 Halifax, NS B3J 2T9
mindnr@novascotia.ca
and
Minister Timothy Halman
Department of Environment and Climate Change, Barrington Tower, 1894 Barrington Street, Suite 1800 P.O. Box 442, Halifax, NS, B3J 2P8
Minister.Environment@novascotia.ca
Forest Public (Crown) Land Management is in Breach of the Public Trust
Minister Rushton and Minister Halman,
We are writing on behalf of the Nature Nova Scotia board of directors and member
organizations, who are critically concerned with the ongoing delays in both protected areas
designation and the transition to ecological forestry.
Most of the forested land in Nova Scotia has been cut five times since 1700, with much now severely degraded into “low-grade wood” status, as the industry calls it. The purpose section of the Crown Lands Act notes that Crown lands will be sustainably used, managed to maintain and enhance biodiversity, and that climate change will be considered. We all want healthy forests and abundant wildlife for future generations and the province reiterated this desire by adopting the 20% lands and water protected areas goal and promising to work towards the changes in forested land management set out by the Lahey Review. Yet, forests with high biodiversity value are still being harvested through outdated methods, some just before they might be officially designated as a provincial protected
area.
Not too long ago, the Department of Environment and Climate Change put out a brief survey asking Nova Scotians for their thoughts about how the province could achieve its 20% protected areas goal. The Blomidon Naturalists Society has identified the Chain Lakes Wilderness Area as key to stewarding biodiversity on public lands in the Annapolis Valley and asked that it be considered for formal protection. The St. Margaret’s Bay Stewardship Association have long championed the Ingram River Wilderness Area in a similar way, and Save Our Old Forests has also recently asked that the Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Area be. There has never been a process (or even much government response when asked) for citizens to recommend public lands for protection, despite the wealth of knowledge and potential for local stewardship these citizens hold. All of these areas are currently being harvested, some through more impactful shelterwood and clearcut methods and, as far as we can tell, with little attention paid to the Lahey recommendations for landscape-scale planning.
Given how long it has taken to designate the protected areas we currently have from the now outdated Parks and Protected Areas Strategy and the slow movement towards ecological forestry on public lands, it must be assumed that both of your departments’ staff are beyond the capacity required to fulfill government’s responsibilities to public lands management. As a small charity with few staff, we sympathize. But we remain critical of what we suspect are cultural or process issues preventing meaningful change within your departments and effective cross-department collaboration. In the 1950’s Robert Stanfield era, job potential prompted his cabinet to offer public land for the stumpage rate of $1 a cord, compared to the going rate at the time of $4.40 a cord. This created the cheap pulpwood scenario that has depressed private wood prices to the present day, and big
business for small trees seems to have dominated the Department of Natural Resources and Renewables’ priorities ever since.
Meanwhile, the public has been given little information or opportunity to meaningfully engage. The Harvest Plan Viewer mechanism is complicated and user-unfriendly. Feedback seems to be ignored, given how many within our network simply never hear from government staff about their comments and harvest plans remain unchanged. The recent protected areas planning survey, short and lacking meaningful content, seems to have done little to actually get protections on the ground. We ask that your departments expand your clientele and service on public lands beyond the industrial perspective, in the interests of both the public and wildlife, and that you work together more effectively to protect and sustainably manage our shared natural capital. Stop harvest activities in public forests over 80 years of age. Retain the remaining, mature public forests through formal protection to restore some balance to nature and provide more mature forest habitats for wildlife. Devise or adopt a method for securing protected areas nominations from the public.
Nova Scotian’s care about public forests and wildlife.
Sincerely,
On behalf of the board and our members,
Bob Bancroft, President of the Board of Directors and
Becky Parker, Executive Director”