| Big Forestry in Nova Scotia, the forestry folks in the Nova Scotia government and the federal forestry folks in Canada like to point out that there has been very little deforestation in NS and in Canada at large, that “Canada’s forest laws are among the strictest in the world”. This, the feds say, is evidence enough that “Canadian forests are healthy, productive and thriving.”
Critics have maintained that while the forest cover may not have changed, forest degradation has occurred though conversion of older forest to younger forest and though species simplification, e.g., see NRDC, 2017
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– EU releases controversial EUDR country risk benchmarking amid fierce environmental criticism
By Ian Westcott, New Food Magazine, May 23, 2025 “The EU’s new deforestation risk benchmarking system has arrived early — but environmental advocates warn it falls short of protecting forests…Mighty Earth points out that some of the world’s highest deforestation hotspots — including Brazil, Bolivia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo — have been omitted from the high-risk list. Meanwhile, countries with documented deforestation issues, such as Canada, Ghana, Papua New Guinea, and Romania, have been labelled low risk.”
– Counting on Canada’s Commitments: To Halt and Reverse Forest Degradation by 2030, Canada Must First Admit It Has a Problem
J. Boan, R Plotkin, David Suzuki Foundation and National research Defence Council, April 4, 2025. 32 pages Referenced, superb illustrated graphics. From the Exec Summary: “Forests are an integral part of Canada. They protect biodiversity, regulate climate, provide jobs, and sustain Indigenous knowledge systems. Yet despite Canada’s claims
that its laws protect the ecological integrity of its forests, forest degradation has occurred across Canada with insufficient government acknowledgement, scrutiny, or recourse. The loss or deterioration of ecological integrity has led to widespread fragmentation of primary and natural forests, reduced carbon storage capacity in plants and soils, shifts in age class and tree species composition, and declines in specific forest-dwelling animal species such as the spotted owl and boreal woodland caribou. It has also led to observed loss of abundance of forest foods and medicines by Indigenous knowledge holders.” Also view Canada’s woodlands have a health problem, says report by Matt Prokopchuk for snnewswatch.com Ma7 7, 2025. “The incoming federal government needs to provide leadership in how forests are managed in Canada, particularly around establishing regulations to ensure that overall woodland health is prioritized, says the report.”
–A second scientific paper by MG Betts & colleagues further documents “Forest Degradation” in Maritime Canada
Post on this website, Oct 31, 2024. “It’s difficult to understate the significance of this paper given the recent efforts of the E.U. to bring in regulations that limit exports and imports of forest products associated with “deforestation” and “forest degradation” while the Canadian forest industry and the federal government contend that our forestry practices are fully sustainable and express concern that such regulations would create unfair trade barriers for Canadian wood exports. The results and conclusions from this recent “Carbon Paper” and an earlier “Bird Paper” by MG Betts & colleagues, both based on data for forests in Maritime Canada, lend a lot of credence to recent protests in Nova Scotia over forest degradation associated with harvesting of remaining patches of Old Forest in landscapes on Crown lands. Likewise, the 2024 “Carbon Paper” does not support the contention of Forest NS that growing secondary forests lock carbon away more effectively than unharvested forests in Protected Areas.”
– Shady Accounting and Vanishing Forests on Nova Scotia’s Crown Lands 14Jul2024
Nina Newington on nsforestmatters.ca Jul 24, 2024. Adapted from from Shady Accounting and Vanishing Forests by Nina Newington in Beyond the Tides Winter 2024 (Blomidon Naturalists Society) Vol. 51, No.1, pp 7-13. https://blomidonnaturalists.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Winter-2024-Beynd-the-tides.pdf
– On Reversing Forest Degradation in Nova Scotia
David Patriquin for NS Forest Notes, created June 8, 2022. View as PDF
– Congruent Long-Term Declines in Carbon and Biodiversity Are a Signature of Forest Degradation
MG Betts et al., Oct 30 2024 in Global Change Biology “Recent global policy initiatives aimed at reducing forest degradation require practical definitions of degradation that are readily monitored. However, consistent approaches for monitoring forest degradation over the long term and at broad scales are lacking. We quantified the long-term effects of intensive wood harvest on above-ground carbon and biodiversity at fine resolutions (30 m2) and broad scales (New Brunswick, Canada; 72,908 km2). Model predictions for above-ground biomass were highly correlated with independent data (r = 0.77). After accounting for carbon stored in wood products, net CO2 emissions from forests for the region from 1985 to 2020 were 141 CO2e Tg (4.02 TgCO2e year−1; 32% of all reported emissions). We found strong positive correlations between locations with declines in above-ground carbon and habitats for old-forest bird species, which have lost > 20% habitat over 35 years. High congruence between biodiversity and forest carbon offers potential for policy incentives to conserve both objectives simultaneously and slow rates of forest degradation. These methods could be used to track forest degradation for managed forest regions worldwide.”
– Deforestation: Definitions, Trends, and Policies for Forests and Forest Products
Kathryn Fernholz et al., for Dovetail Partners, Feb 2023. [“Dovetail seeks to engage you in thoughtful, collaborative processes so that we can create an inspiring path forward and empower you to lead with confidence. Dovetail seeks to accomplish that by providing authoritative information about the impacts and trade-offs of environmental management, including consumption choices, land use decisions, and policy alternatives. Dovetail is a highly skilled team that fosters sustainability and responsible behaviors through collaboration to develop unique concepts, systems, models, and programs. Dovetail excels at solving complex problems and helping responsible organizations succeed. We also help define programs that increase the job creation and the job quality of resource-based industries. Dovetail Partners is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation.”] “This report explores our understanding of deforestation – starting with the terminology – and examines recent global trends and policy actions. Effective strategies to address the negative impacts of deforestation require a greater shared understanding of long term land use trends, robust and elegant cross-commodity policies (i.e., linking food and forest production systems), and scalable actions, including substantial investment, from diverse public and private sector leaders at all levels. Unfortunately deforestation continues for social and political reasons to be a significant global problem, and there are limits to our measurement processes. We can observe, count, and record land conditions – but to understand change we also need to know the intentions of landowners, policy makers, and other influencers. A great deal of work is underway to address deforestation. From private companies reducing their impacts, to policy actions and investment in restoration activities, there are many working models of success to build from. With continued global collaboration and innovation there is good reason to be optimistic about the future of the world’s forests.”