20% Protection by 2030

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www.nsforestmatters.ca/
Ecol. Forestry & Conservation/
… … 20% Protection by 2030/ (THIS PAGE)

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Open letter to Nova Scotia Premier Houston requesting cessation of logging in areas that are prime candidates for protection 17Oct2024
Chain Lake Wilderness Area (proposed)


In 2021, our provincial government  committed NS to 20% protection by 2030, it’s currently just under 14%.

The Department of Natural Resources and Renewables and the Department of Environment and Climate Change are mandated to work together to protect 20% of Nova Scotia by 2030. The deadline for meeting the interim target of 15% — March 2026 — is even more demanding.

A major portion of the  lands to be added to reach 20% will necessarily have to come from forested Crown lands – view Triad Land Distribution (page on this website) for some rough estimates of how much Crown working forest land could be involved.

Links

– Environment and Climate Change: Protected Areas

Collaborative Protected Areas Strategy: An Action Plan for Achieving 20 Per cent
NS Gov. Dec 2023, PDF, 20 pages.

–  Wilderness Areas: A Brief History (NSECC website).

Interactive Maps of Parks and Protected Areas (NSECC website).

John LeDuc Protected areas in NS (YouTube Video)
Posted Apr 18, 2024. A presentation sponsored by the Blomidon Field Naturalists on the history of the protected areas process in Nova Scotia

– The two largest privately funded land protection organizations functioning in Nova Scotia are the Nova Scotia Nature Trust, and the Nature Conservancy of Canada.

– Community Easements Act
“In the spring of 2012, Government passed the Community Easements Act, which provides governments, non-profit groups, and the Mi’kmaq with a new tool for protecting land use and land access. In 2013, the government approved regulations under the Community Easements Act. A community easement is a legal mechanism to maintain community or cultural interests in land, including such things as community access to special places, agricultural or forestry land use, view planes, wetlands, and archaeological sites. The land owner would receive financial compensation from those seeking the community easement for agreeing to place the restriction on the land. To place a community easement on land, a group must be designated under the Act. A community easement is a permanent interest in land that allows a group, the Mikmaq or government to retain the land’s traditional use, even if the land is sold.”

– Nova Scotia Working Woodlands Trust
“The Nova Scotia Working Woodlands Trust (NSWWT) was founded to fill a void in land conservation in Nova Scotia. We aim to uphold the long-term stewardship of working woodlands in Nova Scotia, through ecological forestry and conservation…The NSWWT works through the Nova Scotia Community Easements Act to place working woodlot easements on private woodlands with exceptional stewardship legacies. Woodlot owners continue to be the stewards and owners of their lands, but must abide by the conditions set in their easement, which are typically tied to a forest management plan developed by one of our partner organizations.” An initiative of the Medway Community Forest Co-op. In the process of being set up as a registered charity.

– Commercial Benefits of Nova Scotia’s Protected Areas
Submitted to: Nova Scotia Environment Submitted by: Gardner Pinfold Consultants Inc. October 2017
106 page document

– Biodiversity survey method for detecting species of conservation concern in Nova Scotia protected wilderness areas and nature reserves
R.P. Cameron, Proceedings of the Nova Scotian Institute of Science (2019) Volume 50, Part 1, pp. 165-180. A very important paper, from the discussion:
Protected Areas Ability to Capture Species of Conservation Concern
Protected areas not designed to capture species of conservation concern may not be adequate for protecting vulnerable species. Only about 8% of the vascular plant species of conservation concern known to occur in the province, and about 7% of non-vascular flora, were captured in this study. Birds fared better with about 19% of species captured. Three of the four reptiles of conservation concern were found during the surveys and one of thirteen mammals. It should be noted that the protected areas assessed were not designed to protect specifically species of conservation concern, but rather to protect representative ecosystems. Other protected areas in the network are designed for species at risk (Cameron & Williams 2011) such as the 23,000 ha of nature reserves versus the 496,000 ha of wilderness area primarily focused on ecosystem representation (Nova Scotia Department of Environment 2018). The results of this study support the need to have protected areas specifically for species of conservation concern because protected areas designed to capture representative ecosystems may not capture the rare species of conservation concern. There are also likely species of concern that occur in the study areas but were not captured by the survey.