This page is a subpage of www.nsforestmatters.ca/In the News
See In the News for other subpages.
Selected news, articles etc. on Climate & Biodiversity beginning August 1, 2026
Climate & Biodiversity News items for the period Oct 3, 2024 to July 31 2026 are on a separate page: In the News – Climate & Biodiversity-2
Aug 16, 2026:
– Tiny, beautiful species are going missing from restored forests and wetlands
Emily Chung · CBC News “When larger animals and plants return, minuscule algae, mosses and lichens may not”
Aug 13, 2026:
– Ancient forests took 100,000 years to recover from the last global warming period similar to today – Wyoming fossils reveal what happened
By Regan E. Dunn in The Conversation “…Lessons for today
This sequence carries an important lesson for today. Higher carbon dioxide levels like the world is experiencing now can stimulate plant growth, but only while temperatures and water remain within the limits that trees can tolerate. Beyond those limits, heat, drought, insects, pathogens and wildfire can overwhelm any fertilization effect that would boost growth. Around the world, many forests are already showing signs of diminishing as temperatures rise, in addition to deforestation for timber, crops and rangeland that further reduce their resilience.”
– Forest canopy decline under elevated CO2 during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum
RE Dunn et al., in Science VOL. 393, NO. 6812 :Abstract Uncertainty remains regarding the impact of rapid anthropogenic warming on forest ecosystem structure, biodiversity, and function. As an analog, we reconstruct forest canopy density and compositional change in Wyoming, USA, through the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), an interval of abrupt carbon increase and warming ~56 million years ago. We develop a proxy to quantify leaf area index and assess shifts in floral composition using palynomorphs. Forest canopies opened abruptly at onset of PETM warming, landscape erosion increased, and vegetation shifted from broad-leaved angiosperm to fern- and palm-dominated ecosystems. When combined with regional data, these patterns suggest that continental-scale changes in plant communities cause landscape destabilization. These shifts also have implications for multimillennial-scale hydrologic and carbon cycle feedbacks in the climate system.”
– 
– Record drought threatens future of New Brunswick’s balsam firs
Danielle McCreadie · CBC News “Balsam fir trees in New Brunswick are turning red and dying after last summer’s record-breaking drought, raising concerns about the future of the provincial tree. University of New Brunswick forestry researcher Prof. Anthony Taylor says he has been hearing from woodlot owners and seeing the damage firsthand, as the crisp evergreen trees — favoured for Christmas trees — slowly turn red, dry out, and die. He said the pattern is consistent with what he has observed following other hot, dry summers… He says similar balsam fir die-offs followed unusually hot, dry summers in 1986 and 2018…Taylor explains the trees will stop the photosynthesis process early in reaction to drought conditions, which stops them from growing…The trees also have very shallow roots, meaning it’s harder for them to access water during dry months…Peter McKeil first noticed damage to balsam firs on his woodlot in June. He said they’re turning red from the bottom branches upward. And he is noticing new red spots every day, so the die-off is not over yet…Taylor hopes his research continues to reach the right people, and inspire change. “It should send a signal to society that we need to stop burning fossil fuels. We need to get off fossil fuels. We need to stop cutting too much forest,” he said.”
– Retrofitting Atlantic Canada’s buildings to achieve net zero will cost billions
Glenn MacDonald for Saltwire “…ReCover, an Atlantic Canadian deep retrofit accelerator based in Dartmouth, estimates that bringing the region’s residential building stock to a substantially higher level of performance could require about $187 billion through 2050. Commercial and institutional buildings would require another $55 billion. It is a staggering price tag, but Lorrie Rand, senior adviser and co-founder of ReCover, argues the investment needs to be viewed as infrastructure spending rather than simply an energy-efficiency expense. Atlantic Canada has little choice but to tackle the existing building stock if it wants to meet its climate commitments, Rand said. Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador have targets to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, while Prince Edward Island has set a 2040 target. “That is a very short amount of time,” Rand said. “Emissions from buildings are a significant percentage. There’s really no viable route to achieving our net-zero ambitions unless we do deep retrofits to buildings.”…”
– Dispute Over Counting Forest Carbon Roils Global Standard-Setter
Olivia Raimonde for Bloomberg News/ “A scientist has resigned from the World Resources Institute amid disagreement over how to tally forest carbon in accounting rules that are under development. Those rules, which are being drafted by Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHG Protocol) — a global standard-setting body overseen in part by the non-profit — will shape how companies in the forest industry report their carbon footprints. Tim Searchinger, a senior research scholar at Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs, told Bloomberg News and non-profit newsroom SourceMaterial that he will be leaving his role as technical director of land-related issues at the World Resources Institute this month because of what he said are shortcomings in the GHG Protocol’s process in drawing up the new rules…The argument centers on two competing approaches to calculate carbon stores and emissions from forests. Both approaches seek to account for how forests absorb, store and release carbon, but they differ in how those changes should be attributed. Activity-based accounting seeks to distinguish changes caused by humans from those resulting from natural processes. The managed land proxy approach instead generally treats any changes on managed forest land as the result of human activity. Some experts have raised concerns that managed land proxy would allow companies to essentially double count carbon removals and take credit for those occurring naturally, regardless of their business operations…“We are extremely opposed to the application of [managed land proxy] in the Greenhouse Gas Protocol because it will result in the opposite of what it tries to do, which is climate change mitigation,” said Miguel Mendonça Reis Brandão, who served on the body’s technical working group for forest carbon accounting and is associate professor of industrial ecology and life cycle assessment at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden. “It’s counterproductive.” A spokesperson for the GHG Protocol said the matter is still under review. This is the first time the group will publish guidance on forest carbon accounting; it is accepting comments through February and won’t make a decision until after its standards board evaluates the feedback. Until then, companies can use either accounting approach but must be transparent, the representative said. The issue has split experts and stakeholders involved in the GHG Protocol, with most academics supporting the first approach and most representatives of industry the second, reporting by Bloomberg and SourceMaterial found.”
Aug 11, 2026:
NS Salmon Association announcement on their FB page, July 28, 2026
– Land cover and natural riverscape heterogeneity shape in-stream thermal regimes: Implications for Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) conservation
Hugo Reis Medeiros et al., 2026 in Science of the Total Environment “Abstract. Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) populations continue to experience significant declines across the North Atlantic due to a myriad of factors including acidification, invasive species, and warming waters related to climate change. Temperature is a key habitat metric for salmonids but the underlying factors that drive riverine thermal regimes, and the fine-scale thermal suitability of ecologically significant salmon watersheds in the province of Nova Scotia, Canada, remains largely unknown. Here, we combined field data with a machine learning approach to: (i) identify the main environmental factors driving riverine thermal variability in two large watersheds in the Nova Scotia Southern Uplands region; and (ii) examine thermal habitat suitability for Atlantic salmon in the ∼2313 km of river network that comprise the studied watersheds. We found that riparian forest cover, landscape forest cover, and elevation had a significant cooling influence on water temperature, whereas slope, wetlands and developed areas had a warming effect. Our predictions and thermal suitability maps suggest that 55% (∼ 666 km) of the LaHave River (1214 km) and 22% (∼235 km) of the St. Mary’s River (1072 km) are predicted to have stressful average temperatures for adults during the summer. Daily maximum temperature exceeded 20 °C for more than 40% of the study period in 89% (∼ 1084 km) of LaHave River, and 84% (∼ 903 km) of St. Mary’s River. Daily maximum temperature exceeded 23 °C over 40% of the study period in 26% (∼ 318 km) of LaHave River, and 10% (∼ 110 km) of St. Mary’s River. Significant reaches of both river networks are approaching stressful conditions for adult Atlantic salmon in the warmer months, while thermal conditions are more tolerable to juveniles. Such scenarios underscore the importance of protecting high-quality habitats and thermal refugia, without which salmon populations in this region are unlikely to recover.”
– What these salamanders could tell us about the health of Nova Scotian forests
Giuliana Grillo de Lambarri · CBC News “…Hemlock woolly adelgid (HWA) has been wreaking havoc on forests in southwestern Nova Scotia for almost a decade. To fight its spread, Parks Canada, the province, local organizations and private landowners have been using insecticides, namely imidacloprid and dinotefuran. But Mathilde Christjansen, a master’s student at Mount Allison University in Sackville, N.B., said little is known about if and how woolly adelgid and the insecticides used to fight it are impacting other species. “[Imidacloprid] is intended to affect insect nervous systems, but they can also affect nervous systems in other animals,” she said. “It has been found in the brains of other animals like fish and tadpoles.” Rather than studying all species in all hemlock forests one by one, Christjansen said the team is using one small amphibian to get a snapshot of the ecosystem. The eastern red-backed salamander is a really good bioindicator species because it’s sensitive both to environmental conditions and to pollutants,” she said. “So if anything is happening with our eastern red-backed salamanders, that could be a really good indicator of how the forest is doing as a whole.”..”
Aug 8, 2026:
Indigenous seed program protects N.B. forests, culture and species at risk
Polina Kozlova | CBC News “For Indigenous communities, a seed can represent much more than the beginning of a plant It can carry language, culture, traditional knowledge and a connection to the land. That is why the National Tree Seed Centre in Fredericton is working with Indigenous communities across Canada to collect and preserve native seeds through its Indigenous seed collection program. The program, launched in 2022, aims to protect plant species that could be threatened by climate change, invasive species or other environmental pressures. Mary Knockwood, the Indigenous programs manager at the Atlantic Forestry Centre, said the program is based on collaboration between scientific and Indigenous knowledge…”
Aug 5, 2026:
– 
Report shows N.S. government returned $5M in unspent federal funding for land protection
Michael Gorman · CBC News “The Nova Scotia government returned $5 million in federal funding earmarked for land protection because it did not spend it, and it made no measurable progress in reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the last year. Those are some of the details in the most recent provincial update on progress to achieve goals related to addressing climate change, released last week….” Also View Comments by Nina Newington
– Nearly 80% of N.S. residents oppose private development in protected areas: poll
Danielle Edwards · CBC News “A new poll suggests most Nova Scotians do not want the province to permit private development in provincial parks and protected areas. According to an online survey commissioned by the Ecology Action Centre, nearly 80 per cent of respondents were opposed to things like golf courses, hotels and spas being built in legally protected areas. Just under 60 per cent of respondents were “completely opposed” to allowing development, compared with four per cent who fully supported it.”
************************************************************************
Climate & Biodiversity News items for the period Oct 3, 2024 to July 31 2026 are on a separate page: In the News – Climate & Biodiversity-2