By Nina Newington
Goldsmith Lake & Environs in late summer. Drone image by Malachi Warr
CONTENTS
– CBC investigates
– The obvious question, and others
– Justifying
– Compliant
– Current
– What Now?
– Relevant Freedom of Information Docs
CBC investigates
On June 12th, CBC’s Phlis McGregor reported:
Wrote Nina Newington on May 11, 2025 in A Letter worth reading: Part 1: News (good and bad)…
The Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Area is now under formal evaluation for permanent protection by Environment and Climate Change, with the Department of Natural Resources collaborating. The Citizen Scientists of Southwest Nova Scotia proposed the area for protection in 2022.
Considering that, until recently, the Minister of Natural Resources claimed not to know anything about that proposal, the news that the area is now being treated as a candidate for permanent protection is very good news indeed.
The news, far from coming as a public announcement, is contained – you might even say buried – in the second paragraph of a letter Annapolis MLA David Bowlby sent out on April 23rd…
Some recent followup by CBC on the topic revealed, however, that MLA Bowlby apparently made a mistake and Continue reading
The cryptic ovenbird (June 1, 2023) and an ovenbird nest on the ground (May 26, 2024) – eggs are barely visible (in the highlighted area. How can logging operations avoid such nests and those of so many other birds that go to great lengths to hide them? Photos by David P, nest in bottom pic pointed out by Donna C
Click on images for larger versions
By Nina Newington
Good news, though probably temporary. The logging that began on April 10th in the cutblock around last year’s Lichen Camp (AP021015E) has been paused. The logging equipment seems to have been removed for now, even though the harvesting of the cutblock doesn’t appear to be complete.
The probable reason for the pause can be found in an assurance that MLA Bowlby (or whoever was writing these letters for him) extended to a constituent who, along with protesting the whole idea of logging in a proposed protected area, had raised the issue of the damage done by logging during nesting season. Bowlby’s letter to her stated:
All operations adhere to federal migratory bird regulations, including seasonal restrictions to avoid nesting periods.
A month after that letter was sent, in response to a direct question on Facebook as to whether harvesting would stop for nesting season, the contractor, Josh Morse, said yes. That was on May 24th or 25th . Continue reading
By Nina Newington
MLA Bowlby’s letter to constituents protesting the logging happening now in the Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Area is proving to be quite a resource for those of us trying to extract some understanding of how this government plans to meet its legal commitment to protect nature.
…On April 17th, I reported to DNR a Northern Goshawk nest I had discovered the previous evening in old forest close to the boundary of the cutblock that WestFor’s contractor began cutting on April 12th — AP021215E.
By Nina Newington
Goldsmith Lake & Environs in late summer. Drone image by Malachi Warr
The Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Area is now under formal evaluation for permanent protection by Environment and Climate Change, with the Department of Natural Resources collaborating. The Citizen Scientists of Southwest Nova Scotia proposed the area for protection in 2022.
Considering that, until recently, the Minister of Natural Resources claimed not to know anything about that proposal, the news that the area is now being treated as a candidate for permanent protection is very good news indeed. Read More
By Lisa Proulx*
We continue to look for Species at Risk (SAR) in the proposed Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Area, in an attempt to protect not only the old growth forests, but the younger and mature areas in between, to ensure the ecological continuity and continuous habitat that so many of our vulnerable species need for future survival.
*This post is copied, with permission, from a post made by Lisa P. on the Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Area Facebook Page on May 4, 2025.
We spend many hours most weeks “intelligently meandering” through the beautiful woods searching for new locations of SAR and also other species that we haven’t documented yet.
Nina Newington
Lichen Camp is a research camp dedicated to educating the public and the government about biodiversity and the importance of protecting it.
The camp is run by a loose collection of people working to protect the proposed Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Area in Annapolis County, Nova Scotia.
Old sugar maple stand approved for harvest in citizen-proposed Chain Lakes Wilderness Area.
By Nina Newington*
Shortly after coming to power in 2021, Tim Houston’s government tabled the Environmental Goals and Climate Change Reduction Act (EGCCRA). To their credit, it incorporated one of the election pledges the PCs ran on: to protect 20% of Nova Scotia’s lands and waters by 2030. In October 2023 the Canada-Nova Scotia Nature Agreement introduced an interim target of protecting 15% by 2026. It also gave Nova Scotia $28.5 million to help it get moving on meeting these protection goals.
*This post was first published as as a contribution from SOOF (Save Our Old Forests) on www.healthyforestcoalition.ca on Apr 10, 2025. Continue reading
By Nina Newington
 An old Yellow Birch in the Goldsmith Lake area At right: At right: This old Yellow Birch in the Goldsmith Lake area was revealed by our coring to be well over 300 years of age. It is located in an area that the Bowater map shows as having been cut and treated in 1971-72. Hence it was assumed by DNR not to host any old growth forest. Our citizen science observations led DNR to investigate and finally to recognize the existence of old growth stands within areas managed and harvested by Bowater between 1970 and 2012. |
At issue in this ongoing series by Nina Newington is whether 3900 hectares of Crown land around Goldsmith Lake in Annapolis County should be protected, as citizen scientists propose, or whether it should remain available for forestry and other industrial activities.
In Stories Maps Tell I: Just Not True, posted Feb 2, 2025, I described the Bowater map for the area and how DNR uses this map to justify logging in this area, maintaining that it is largely “managed forest” that was cut or treated between 1970 and 2012. However close examination of the map shows that there is a LOT of forest that was not touched during Bowater’s tenure.
In Stories Maps Tell II: Where the Bowater map gets it right, I show that, except for some old forest clearcut by WestFor after Bowater went bankrupt, areas west of Goldsmith Lake shown as untouched on the Bowater map are of high conservation value. Some stands were assessed as old-growth forest by DNR in 2023. In others, a survey of calicioid (stubble) lichens by Citizen Scientists demonstrated a level of ecological continuity typical of old-growth forest. Neither DNR’s old-growth assessments nor the scientific article published about the Citizen Scientists stubble lichen survey seemed to change DNR’s “managed forest” narrative about the area.
Now, in Stories Maps Tell III: Where the Bowater Map got it wrong plus a new map to enjoy, my starting point is the discovery of old-growth forest on a peninsula in Goldsmith Lake that the Bowater map shows as having been cut and treated in 1971-72. This leads into a broader examination of the stories DNR tells and the ones it chooses not to tell. In the face of the curious secrecy surrounding the existence of multiple stands of old-growth forests around Goldsmith Lake, the vital importance of Freedom of Information requests is revealed.
In a Commentary published in the Chronicle Herald on Mar 4, 2025, Geoff Hurley offers specific, practical recommendations for ensuring long-term well-being of Nova Scotians and our natural environment while moving ahead with more resource development in NS.
Mr. Hurleys’s perspective is informed by his many years as an environmental consultant which included his serving as the Senior Environmental Advisor for the Sable Offshore Energy Project to date “the largest natural resources development project in the history of the province” – and one that was concluded without significant environmental issues.
His comments are surely timely and constructive. In the interest of helping to see them more widely considered, we asked Mr. Hurley for permission to reproduce them on NSFM, to which he kindly agreed. Read More
