In the proposed Ingram River Wilderness Area. From www.protecttheingram.com
CBC’s Carsten Knox interviewed St. Margaret’s Bay Stewardship Association Coordinator Mike Lancaster, and Ecology Action Centre’s Wilderness Coordinator Raymond Plourde on the topic of “Protecting Wilderness Areas” for Information Morning – NS with Portia Clarke, aired on Nov 19, 2024.
Forestry and conservation efforts are frequently at odds in Nova Scotia. Environmental groups are concerned about an uptick in forestry operations on public land that they’re working to protect. We hear from a couple of activists.
Lancaster has been actively involved in efforts to protect the citizen-proposed IRWA (Ingram River Wilderness Area), an approx 15000 ha area near Saint Margaret’s Bay.
As he described in a Facebook post reproduced on NS Forest Matters on Sep 23, 2024, Protect Ingram River Wilderness Area supporters have been concerned about plans for logging in that area well before final boundaries are established for achieving the government’s legislated commitment to 20% Protection by 2030.
Similar concerns have been expressed about logging and plans for logging in the Chain Lake Wilderness Area, the Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Area and the Tobeatic Wilderness Area Addition (view posts Oct 20, 2024, Nov 4, 2024).
Lancaster expressed concern that “there’s not a very transparent way for the public to engage and how that process [selection of sites for harvesting] works, at least one that’s not very accessible.”
Plourde commented that “Forestry industry companies seem to be targeting areas that have been nominated by citizens groups around the province.”
Questioned about that when he made a presentation to the Halifax Field Naturalists the same day, Mike Lancaster commented that it may be a matter of the “Best of What’s Left” simply being in the older forests that remain in NS, but that only adds to the need to protect them. Regardless, he said, it’s up to government, not industry, to put a hold on harvesting in proposed protected areas on Crown lands.
Plourde pointed out that “although a year ago the government did release a document called the Collaborative Protected Areas Strategy…unfortunately nothing has been done since then…There is no collaboration with citizens groups or industry or civil society at large, the public, about moving that forward in any kind of concrete weigh.”
Listen to the full interviews and/or read a rough transcript below.
The final comment from CBC: “The CBC reached out to the province for an interview but they didn’t get back in time for our deadline but we hope to have someone on the show soon.”
Whether that actually occurs will provide some indication of whether government, old and/or new, “got the message” – and cares.
—————
Rough Transcript of the interviews with Activists
CBC: NS environmental groups are sounding the alarm about what they are saying is a sudden increase in forestry. They’re seeing a new series of proposed forestry operations on public lands.
Mike Lancaster is the executive director of the Saint Margaret’s Bay stewardship association the group wants to protect the Ingram River Wilderness area near Saint Margaret’s Bay. He spoke with the CBC’s Carsten Knox
CBC: Now you’ve been trying to have the Ingram river wilderness area protected for some time – where is that now in your efforts?
ML: We did have the fortune of getting a little over 4000 hectares of it protected. The entire proposal is for a total of about 15,000 so there’s kind of 11,000 hectares left.
We got through this government, the former PC government that’s now dissolved with the election pending, We worked with them and were able to get about 4000 hectares designated as Island Lake Wilderness Area and an expansion to an existing wilderness area but there’s still 75ish percent of the area that remains unprotected, and that’s what we’re continuing to work towards.
CBC: And how often has the province proposed harvesting in this area and when they have, have they gone through with it?
ML: There has been a kind of recent explosion of that, maybe that’s kind of too dramatic a term, but we’ve seen just under 1000 acres of proposed harvests in 2024 alone.
So this was something that kind of used to happen occasionally and was frustrating all the time, but now that it’s happening in really quick succession with these large cuts.
It’s got us really concerned because there is no process to kind of look into this area and see how it can be formally protected, there’s no process in place, that we’re really hoping the Department of Environment with the new government, especially we can work with them to establish that, and find a way to work with all folks who have an interest in it, all stakeholders, all forestry groups, all ATV groups, to find something that that works for everybody and protect the areas that definitely merit it.
CBC: Do you have a sense of how they choose these areas to harvest?
ML: For harvest, it’s not really clear; there’s not a very transparent way for the public to engage and how that process works, at least one that’s not very accessible.
So that’s why it is a little kind of odd and concerning to see this amount of proposed harvest coming up in this area. So it’s it’s not clear why it’s being targeted so heavily.
CBC: And do you have a sense that that the forestry industry is paying any attention to the kind of areas that you guys want to protect?
ML: There’s always going to be balance right and we’ve kind of built it right into our proposal that the St. Margarets district of the former Bowater lands; It’s about 80,000 hectors or so.
What we’re asking for is a relatively small percentage of that area to be conserved with the majority still being opened for forestry.
As I said, I’ve got a background in forestry, I still work in that area as well and I can’t imagine that they’re not paying attention.
We’ve seen historically that a lot of the companies will react to conservation as a threat and kind of come out quite aggressively to try and squash those those types of initiatives, Which is unfortunate for me to see, because there is a gap in that balance to be made, and it’s unfortunate when initiatives like this are framed as anti-forestry because it kind of hurts the public discord and the ability to come to the table and find a compromise that works for everybody.
And it’s additionally sad as somebody who is pro-forestry but pro-ecological forestry, so it’s not kind of an either or issue. And I think some of the companies kind of see it that way.
CBC: So have you or your group had any recent conversations with problems about these concerns around this area?
ML: We did from the last two batches that came up. This one that came up recently was literally just announced a couple of days ago so we’re still kind of in shock and right now all the government both kind of un-elected and hopeful are very busy and environment and conservation and forestry aren’t really a major issue in this election unfortunately.
We’re hoping that this draws attention to some of the holes that are in currently in public policy, that there is no process, there is no plan in place to see how we get to protection.
And in Nova Scotia because as some of your listeners would know, there’s a piece of legislation on the books called the Environmental Goals and Climate Change Reduction Act that legally requires Nova Scotia to protect 20% of its lands and waters by 2030.
That’s a lot of land to do in a relatively small amount of time and we need a process in place that identifies areas that are significant like this, and establishes a pathway to how we can ensure that the areas that need to be protected are protected in a timely fashion that deals with that legal requirement that we all have to adhere to.
CBC: Mike Lancaster is the executive director of the St. Margaret’s Bay Stewardship Association. He spoke with the CBC’s Karsten Knox.
Carsten also spoke with Raymond Plourde. He is the Senior Wilderness Coordinator at the Ecology Action Centre.
RP: Forestry industry companies seem to be targeting areas that have been nominated by citizens groups around the province. We’ve seen with each new release of proposed harvest plans through something called the Harvest Plan Map Viewer, an increasing number each time they updated of areas in proposed wilderness areas that have been proposed by different citizens groups in the vacuum left by government.
So in areas like Ingram River and the Chain Lakes Area, Goldsmith Lake, Tobeatic Addition, and others, we see an increasing number of proposed harvests.
And with those harvests come roads. And the roads and the hauling trails in these harvests are not counted in terms of the wood that is removed. The roads are permanent features left behind where no trees will grow again so we’re talking about permanent deforestation.
And even though they’re supposed to be doing something called Ecological Forestry under the Lehey prescriptions, light touch forestry in these areas, even where these cuts are only supposed to remove let’s say 20% to 30% maximum of any stand at any one time under the ecological forestry paradigm, somehow the government and the industry don’t have to count all of the trees removed for roads and hauling trails.
So the net effect is that cuts that might be 20 or 30% removals, in reality are 50% removals or higher.
So the concern is that until these areas are officially nominated by government which is its job the forest industry is continuing to move ahead as if no areas will ever be protected and they seem to be increasingly focused on areas that are being proposed by citizens for protection for the 20% commitment.
CBC: We are in an election right now. Has the PC government offered any plan in terms of their environmental priorities for the future?
RP: No. Whereas there were very strong and number of really solid commitments from the PC party in the last election, the word environment doesn’t really even appear in their election platform this time and there certainly silent on protected areas or any plan to meet the legislative targets.
And that’s a real shame although a year ago the government did release a document called the Collaborative Protected Areas Strategy, but unfortunately nothing has been done since then.
There is no collaboration with citizens groups or industry or civil society at large, the public, about moving that forward in any kind of concrete weigh.
And obviously it’s up to government to nominate candidate areas to put in temporary moratorium while they study to make decisions over which areas will be protected and which areas will be left as general Crown land which can be subject to all sorts of industrial uses.
And you know from our perspective, it’s like they have kind of got it backwards, they’re making decisions or allowing companies to propose projects of industrial extraction nature before they have decided which pieces to protect.
CBC. Raymond Plourde is with the Ecology Action Centre. As Mike Lancaster mentioned, the province is required to protect 20% of its land by 2030.We’re currently at about 14%.
The CBC reached out to the province for an interview but they didn’t get back in time for our deadline but we hope to have someone on the show soon.