Media Release
From Save Our Old Forests, Dec 4, 2025
For Immediate Release
Images inserted by NSFM
Camp NOW protests failure to protect wilderness areas
“Camp NOW occupies the exact same spot as this year’s Lichen Camp”. Photo from the Lichen Camp,
Camp N.O.W. – Need Our Wilderness – was set up on November 30th on Crown land in the proposed Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Area in Annapolis County by Save Our Old Forests’ president Nina Newington and others who have been working to get the area permanently protected since 2022. Camp NOW is protesting the government’s failure to protect the Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Area or any other new Wilderness Areas on public lands. Progress towards protecting 20% of Nova Scotia’s lands and waters by 2030 has been miniscule, less than half a percent since the commitment was included in the Environmental Goals and Climate Change Reduction Act in 2021. Instead, DNR is approving logging in citizen-proposed Wilderness Areas including Goldsmith Lake, Beals Brook, Ingram River and Chain Lakes.
Quotes:
Nina Newington, Save Our Old Forests, president
As Treaty People, we share a responsibility to care for the lands and waters of Mi’kma’ki. It is not enough to mutter a land acknowledgement. This government has turned its back on its Treaty responsibilities and on its legal commitments.
Camp NOW occupies the exact same spot as this year’s Lichen Camp, which ran from April till the woods closed in August. The focus of that camp’s research was the Corbett peninsula, in the eastern part of the Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Area. With recognized Pine Marten habitat, three stands of old growth forest, and 12 confirmed species at risk occurrences, the peninsula’s high conservation value is now well-established. It more than meets all the government’s own criteria for areas to protect. But citizen scientists recently discovered new flagging around the largest cutblock on the peninsula. Clearly, logging is going ahead anyway.
“The harvest plan area on the Corbett peninsula looks like Swiss cheese with all the cut outs for lichen buffers and old growth forest.”
Click on image for larger version
This government’s refusal to protect proposed Wilderness Areas is getting quite ridiculous. The harvest plan area on the Corbett peninsula looks like Swiss cheese with all the cut outs for lichen buffers and old growth forest. Why not just protect the peninsula? The same goes for the whole Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Area. Within its 4 square kilometers, 31 stands of old growth forest and 121 species at risk occurrences have been identified. This area’s conservation value is as high as any area currently protected in Nova Scotia.
What’s particularly baffling is that the province needs to protect 68 square kilometers by the end of next year. If they don’t, we have to give back millions of dollars to the federal government. So why not go ahead and protect citizen-proposed Wilderness Areas such as Goldsmith Lake, Beals Brook, Ingram River and Chain Lakes? Together, these four cover 32 square kilometers, enough to get us almost halfway to the required target of protecting 15% by 2026. Citizen scientists have already done the hard work of documenting their ecological value. Freedom of Information request documents reveal that the department of Environment and Climate Change has already reviewed many of these areas. It wouldn’t take much to get them permanently protected.
Tim Houston’s bullying tactics and poor governance are not taking us where we need to go. This government’s failure to protect is not about science – they have all the evidence they need — it is about directing departments to work together. We are tired of hearing the government say they will meet the 20% target while we watch them do less than nothing. We need our wildernesses protected and we need them protected now.
Donna Crossland, Forest Ecologist and member of the former Ministerial Advisory Committee on implementing the Lahey Report
I worry about anyone setting up a camp on Crown land now, given the amendments to the Crown Land Act that were rammed through this fall in the so-called ‘Protecting Nova Scotians Act’, but I get it that groups like the Citizen Scientists, like Save Our Old Forests, have had it with watching the government chisel away at areas they have shown so clearly should be protected.
I mean for goodness sake, Goldsmith Lake is right next to West Dalhousie where the Long Lake fire burned 85 km² this year. Why can’t the government protect 4 km²? Where are the wildlife supposed to go when their homes have burned to the ground? And it’s not only wildlife. People need old forests too. They need them for practical reasons, to store carbon and soak up heavy rains, but they also need them for their own peace, for their own healing. There couldn’t be a sharper contrast, between the green shade of an old forest, and the charred remains of the plantations that burned in the Long Lake fire. When will government learn and accept two central points? 1)Forestry is not entitled to every tree on our public forest land; and 2) Maintaining intact forests can earn us substantially more revenue than through cutting them down. It is past time this government got on with protecting substantial areas of Crown land. They need to meet the target they set themselves. And they need to stop their arrogant, aggressive tactics.
Media contacts:
Nina Newington 902 698 4347 nina@ninanewington.com
Donna Crossland 902 349 4103 donnacrosslandns@outlook.com