by Nina Newington, Feb 14, 2025.*
*The second in a series on Stories Maps Tell. #1: Just Not True (Feb 2, 2025)
CONTENTS
– Introduction
– Some very Old Growth forest kept under wraps by DNR
– The untouched area to the south
– Untouched areas DNR approved for logging
– About those harvest plans DNR added to the Bowater map
– A brand new logging road
– Lichens…
– Listen to the lichens
– Stubble lichens highlight ecological continuity of Old Growth forest
Yellow birch, 107 cm diameter at breast height. in a stand by Goldsmith Lake identified by citizen scientists in 2023 as possible Old Growth. The stand was investigated by DNR revealing hardwoods over 200 years old – information revealed only through a Freedom of Information request.
Introduction
To recap briefly, at issue 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.
Based on documents received through Freedom of Information requests, DNR has consistently briefed the Minister that the area is “managed forest.” In these briefing notes, DNR leans heavily on a map showing all the forestry work Bowater did during the time they owned the land. When examined more closely, however, this map shows extensive areas of old forest that Bowater left untouched.
Along the western shore of Goldsmith Lake there are two patches of old-growth that are recognized and protected under the province’s Old Growth Forest Policy. DNR failed to add these when they drew their 2022 harvest plans onto the old Bowater map they sent to the Minister. I have added them (shaded red) as well as arrows indicating areas the map shows as untouched.
Bowater map with new harvest plan boundaries added by DNR; recognized old-growth forest and arrows added by me (NN).
DNR’s assessment of the 9.2 ha stand west of Goldsmith Lake. Information from a Freedom of Information request.The existence of this Old-Growth stand has not been made public by DNR. Click on image for larger version
Some very Old Growth forest kept under wraps by DNR
The area with the red arrow, north of the recognized old growth, turns out to include yet more old growth, four stands in fact that have been assessed by DNR as meeting the criteria laid out in the Old-Growth Forest Policy.
The largest is a 9.2 hectare stand of Yellow Birch and Sugar Maple that both citizen scientists and DNR identified as possible old-growth in 2023.
That fall, DNR’s old-growth team assessed it. The average age of the trees sampled came in at 250 years old. The youngest was 227. DNR’s age threshold for old-growth hardwood forest is 140.
In our wind-buffetted, long-colonized province it is extremely rare to find an old-growth hardwood stand this old.
What about the untouched area to the south with the blue arrow?
Back to the Bowater map. From the information available to the public on the Provincial Landscape Viewer, the untouched area to the south with the blue arrow included tall stands of Yellow Birch and Sugar Maple, just like the area to the north. The forest stand data is from 2012, the year Nova Scotians bought back these lands from the bankrupt Bowater Mersey mill. DNR, in charge now that these were Crown lands, allowed WestFor to clearcut this area somewhere around 2017. Until that point, it’s quite likely that a band of old growth forest stretched along the entire western shore of Goldsmith Lake.
Some areas, then, that appear untouched on the Bowater map were only untouched during the time they owned the land – 1970 to 2012. Fortunately there has not been much cutting since 2012 in the area now proposed for protection as the Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Area.
In 2022 that was about to change.
Untouched areas DNR approved for logging
In the spring of 2022, plans to log 462 hectares of the area around Goldsmith Lake were posted on the province’s Harvest Plan Map Viewer (HPMV). These are the plans DNR drew onto the Bowater map. Some of the areas where harvests were planned had indeed been ‘managed’ by Bowater but others – indicated by the green arrows I added to the Bowater map – had not.
Once again, areas shown as untouched by Bowater (and untouched since becoming Crown land) have turned out to be of high conservation value.
The small harvest plan area to the north may well be old-growth forest. Whether or not it meets DNR’s criteria, a pair of Northern Goshawks judged it old enough to nest there in 2024. These birds hunt within the canopy of the forest so they need the kind of wide tree spacing characteristic of old growth. DNR’s attention has been drawn to that stand repeatedly as one that should be assessed. To the best of our knowledge it has not been, but at some point it was quietly dropped from the harvest plan list.
The larger untouched area to the south, a place where two harvest plans intersect, has also proved to be ecologically important. Some very particular lichens have played a crucial role in demonstrating this and also in halting logging in the area to date.
About those harvest plans DNR added to the Bowater map.
Screen Capture from the Harvest Plan Map Viewer showing harvest plan boundaries in the area of Goldsmith Lake. All were approved in 2022 except where noted as “Pre-2022”. Green is Crown land, Gray is private
Of the 462 ha put up for comment on the HPMV with 40 day comment periods ending in April and June 2022, 252 ha were on the west side of Goldsmith Lake. Another 106 ha were further west, closer to Stailings Lake and Tupper Brook. The remainder were east of Goldsmith Lake. All were ‘ecological’ prescriptions rather than outright clearcuts, but a close look at those prescriptions shows that they all involve removing at least 50% of the forest at a time. WestFor claimed in an op-ed in the Chronicle Herald in November that “Even in those blocks designated for harvest, two-thirds of the trees will be left standing.” That just isn’t true. www.pressreader.com Dec 2, 2022
When the plans came up for comment, naturalists, a forest ecologist and a former head of the Protected Areas Branch of the Department of Environment strongly objected. In letters to the minister and in comments on the Harvest Plan Map Viewer they pointed to the high conservation value of extensive, unfragmented forest surrounding a rare pristine lake. In an area of the South Mountain that had been extensively clearcut in the last 30 years, the extraordinary ecological importance of keeping the area intact was stressed repeatedly.
As usual, the people who commented on the HPMV got no response.
A brand new logging road
In October 2022, a group of citizen scientists hiked into the area west of Goldsmith Lake. They came upon a brand new logging road with a 30m wide roadway clearcut through old forest.
Apparently the harvest plans had been given the go ahead in spite of the public’s objections.
Lichens…
Frosted Glass Whiskers. Photo by Ashlea Viola
Overcoming their dismay, the citizen scientists turned away from the road towards the lake, and immediately found a species at risk lichen, Sclerophora peronella or Frosted Glass Whiskers.
Listed both federally and provincially as a species at risk, this tiny calicioid or stubble lichen is recognized as an old-growth indicator.
Extract from Table 2 in Nova Scotia Natural Respources document “At-Risk Lichens–Special Management Practices“ (May 23, 2018)
This was to be the first of many finds in the area, revealing an extraordinary concentration of this particular calicioid or stubble lichen.
Crucially, the Special Management Plan for this lichen requires that any forestry, road building or other industrial activity leave a 100 m buffer around each occurrence.
Species-at-Risk at Goldsmith Lake as of Mar 7, 2023 Note that this map shows the original Old-Growth Forest areas. The first Frosted Glass Whiskers identifications just east of the new logging road (black line) are on the boundary of what is now recognized Old-Growth. The old trail is visible closer to the lake.
Listen to the lichens
The greatest concentration of Frosted Glass Whiskers lichen west of the lake coincides with the areas Bowater’s map shows as having been untouched. This was true when the first 11 occurrences were identified (March 7, 2023 map). It remained true in May 2024 when 51 occurrences had been identified across the 3900 ha proposed wilderness area.
Their presence indicates old, undisturbed forest. It does not necessarily indicate the presence of the sort of old-growth forest that meets DNR’s criteria. These criteria, laid out in the Old Growth Forest Policy for Nova Scotia, rely heavily on tree age. There is plenty of debate about how to define old-growth forest but everyone agrees that it should be protected because old-growth forests support the most biodiversity and biodiversity is declining precipitously around the globe. How long a forest has been a forest – its ecological continuity – directly affects how much biodiversity it can support.
Stubble lichens highlight ecological continuity of old growth forest
The Frosted Glass Whiskers – Sclerophora peronella – is a stubble lichen. This whole class of lichens – the calicioids – is picky. Many will only grow on very specific substrates. Some species insist on the roots of old, tipped up trees. Others prefer woodpecker holes; still others the backside of yellow birch bark curls. Frosted Glass Whiskers requires the rotting heartwood of certain hardwood trees. Some of those microhabitats only show up in old – late successional – forests. It takes a long time to develop enough variety of microhabitats to support a wide range of stubble lichen species. Young forests just haven’t had time to develop all the nooks and crannies (aka structural complexity) that old forests have. They can’t support the same variety of life that an old forest can.
The citizen scientists, noting that the Frosted Glass Whiskers lichen was far from the only stubble lichen they were seeing in the area west of Goldsmith Lake, enlisted the help of North America’s preeminent expert in stubble lichens, Dr. Steven Selva of the University of Maine, and conducted a stubble lichen survey of the area. Dr. Selva had developed a protocol, already well-tested, for evaluating the ecological continuity of a forest. Essentially, documenting more than 20 species of stubble lichens in a contiguous area of forest indicates that it has the ecological continuity typical of old-growth forest.
The citizen scientists identified 27 different species in the mixed forest west of Goldsmith, including one found for the first time in Nova Scotia. In April 2024, a peer-reviewed scientific journal, Evansia, published an article about their survey:
Bursting the stubble bubble: citizen scientists measure ecological continuity near Goldsmith Lake, Nova Scotia using calicioid lichens and fungi.
By Ashlea Viola, Nina Newington, Jonathan Riley, Steven Selva & Lisa Proulx in Evansia 41 (1), 9-18, (17 April 2024). https://doi.org/10.1639/0747-9859-41.1.9
Abstract In an effort to protect a forest on provincial land near Goldsmith Lake in Annapolis County, Nova Scotia, from timber harvest operations, a group of citizen scientists began documenting the biodiversity of the area. In December 2022, the group invited Dr. Steven Selva, a lichenologist specializing in calicioid lichens and fungi, to visit and teach them how to locate and collect calicioid specimens. We found 27 calicioid species, one of which was new to the Maritimes, providing additional evidence that the forest is rich in biodiversity and that the areas recognized as old-growth were larger than the provincial government had previously realized.
The rarest of these stubble lichens are those that find their niches in late-successional (old) forests. This habitat is in short supply. As the map below shows, the west side of Goldsmith Lake is clearly to their liking.
Late-succesional Calcicoid Lichens and Species-at-Risk in the proposed Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Area. Observations up to May 15, 2024. Note: Other than Black Ash, Fraxinus nigra (green square) and Blue Felt Lichen, Pectenia plumbea (blue square), all the species shown here are calicioid lichens that are typically found in old – late-successional – forests.
Specifically, and not surprisingly, they were found almost exclusively in the forests the Bowater map shows as untouched.
Species-at-Risk superimposed on the Bowater Map
The citizen scientists, as part of their ongoing efforts to collaborate with DNR, informed DNR of the results of the stubble survey, sending them a link to the Evansia article when it came out. Evidence that forests west of Goldsmith Lake are either scoring as old-growth according to DNR’s criteria or supporting a level of biodiversity characteristic of very old forest does not appear to have changed DNR’s narrative that the area around Goldsmith Lake is managed forest and not worth protecting.
What evidence would be enough? Proof that stands of old-growth forest ring the whole of Goldsmith Lake?
Stay tuned for Part III!