For the Birds, a little good news 6Jun2025

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 .

Those “federal migratory bird regulations” pertain to the Migratory Bird Convention Act, first made law in 1917. This is an international convention, and it covers many more bird species than just the fabulous flood of migrants that are filling the woods with song right now..

The associated Migratory Bird Regulations (revised in 2022) state that:

Placing and enforcing seasonal restrictions on logging in forests while birds are nesting might seem an obvious place to start, but somehow it is never that simple. Enforcement has been close to non-existent. What is required of logging contractors is murky.

Take those “seasonal restrictions to avoid nesting periods.” The start and end dates are not clear. The chart on the federal Environment and Climate Change site that includes the western half of Nova Scotia, zone C2, shows that the period when the maximum number of forest bird species are nesting is from May 21st to July 21st. But clearly, from the chart, a longer pause would protect more of the species that nest earlier and later, as well as leaving more of a buffer for seasonal variations. One step up in protection for our area would be to pause from May 13th to July 27th.

Forest Birds in Zone C2. From Canada Gov. Nesting Periods

So what is happening at Goldsmith? When I checked the cutblock around our old campsite on May 25th, logging seemed to have paused. No equipment was visible. I confirmed this on the 28th. May 13th was the last time I saw equipment on the logging road with signs of fresh cutting. I didn’t check the cutblock in between the 13th and the 25th so I can’t be more precise about the date cutting stopped. At this point we don’t know when or if it will start up again.

Some very local history

Whatever the exact parameters of the pause, its existence is something to celebrate. Six years ago, in June 2019, local people protested the imminent logging of the Corbett-Dalhousie Lake peninsula. This peninsula, the current location of Lichen Camp 2025, is in the easternmost part of the proposed Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Area. Back then, birders from all over converged on the peninsula to document the species present and look for nests.

Sound of Silence at Corbett-Dalhousie Lakes forest  on June 15, 2019
Photo by David P

Many people, myself included, learned about the Migratory Bird Convention Act for the first time. It seemed to offer the best way to achieve a temporary reprieve for the peninsula while longer term solutions for protecting the area were identified. On June 12th CBC’s Portia Clark interviewed Marcus Zwicker, then General Manager of WestFor, live on Information Morning. Zwicker was quite explicit that WestFor would not change its harvesting schedule for birds. They changed it for snowmobilers, he commented, but birds? Later in the interview he admitted that harvesting during nesting season meant that “it would be inevitable that nests are destroyed.” (See post on NSFN, June 11, 2019)

Plans to harvest the peninsula were shelved shortly after that interview (see post on NSFN,  June 15, 2019). Both government and WestFor went to some lengths to make it clear that logging wasn’t halted in order to respect the Migratory Bird Convention Act. The documented presence of endangered Chimney Swifts and the discovery of a migratory Magnolia Warbler on her nest had nothing to do with the decision not to log just then. Ditto the presence of people camped on the logging road. No, it was the weather.

And perhaps it’s true, as Stephen McNeil, my MLA as well as Premier, told me a couple of years later, “It wasn’t the birds, it was that interview.”

In that interview Marcus Zwicker told the truth. It is inevitable that nests are destroyed if forests are logged during nesting season. There is no way that a person operating harvesting equipment can see a little Hermit Thrush nest among the leaves and twigs on the forest floor. Furnishing the operator with a bird nest identification card is a nasty joke.

So it is a big deal that logging has been paused for nesting season in the only active cutblock within the proposed Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Area. DNR deserves thanks for doing this. But will they acknowledge that is what they are doing? And when, in their opinion, will logging start up again? I could ask, but I’m still waiting for an answer to a couple of less charged inquiries.

Needless to say, there are many more points to be made. Is WestFor pausing all their logging operations on public (Crown) land this year to avoid those “seasonal restrictions nesting periods”? Or just in proposed protected areas? Or in proposed protected areas where citizens are watching? And what about the findings in the 2022 Matt Betts et al study that the declines in Maritime bird populations are tied directly to the loss of old forest habitat, that loss being almost entirely the result of logging? Why are WestFor and DNR seemingly in league to keep cutting forests that should be protected?

Merlin identifications of birds at Goldsmith Lake May 30, 301 2025. Hermit Thrush & Ovenbird are ground-nesters

Those are all valid and important questions but it is important to acknowledge and enjoy small signs of progress towards a kind of forestry where protecting biodiversity is a priority. I personally found it extremely hard to move camp this spring so that logging could begin in woods where we were already hearing the first new arrival, the Hermit Thrush, singing. We knew from last year how many birds would soon be laying eggs and feeding hatchlings in the forest around camp. It feels good to know that they, their young, their eggs, their nests are not being destroyed in that particular forest right now. If the Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Area passes its formal evaluation – and really, why would it not? – then the birds will be able to nest from now on in these 3900 hectares without the threat of being crushed by logging equipment. They will face plenty of other threats, as will we all, but not this one.

For more on Ground-Nesting Birds whose nests are the most difficult nests to avoid disturbing, even by hikers, see Ground-Nesting Birds 2024. The link is to a set of pages about ground-nesting birds on the website of the Backlands Coalition.