NAVIGATION. This page is a subpage of In the News – Wildfire/Extreme Weather on the website Nova Scotia Forest Matters (www.nsforestmatters.ca)
On CBC Maritime Noon, Oct 15, 2025
(Click on link to listen to archived audio file)
“On the phone-in: Anthony Taylor who’s an Associate Professor of Forest Ecology and Management at the University of New Brunswick, shares advice for managing your woodlot in an era of climate change... ”
It’s a wide-ranging, informative interview and phone-in.
ROUGH TRANSCRIPT
A rough transcript is given below; times in the audio file are referenced periodically (as minutes/seconds from the beginning). Some bolding and in CAPS, subtitles, are inserted to facilitate a “quick read”/provide a guide to the contents.
If the reader wants an exact quote, please consult the original CBC audio file.
I’m Bob Murphy, welcome to Maritime Noon.
….Climate change is making us rethink our approach to all kinds of things and forestry is no exception.
AT: I think it’s safe to say that over the next 25 or 30 years that the climate here will become closer to that we experience in southern New England so then the things they think about is what species do we have here that we might want to promote that’s more adaptive to that sort of climate
BM: We’re taking your calls on small woodlot management and increasing climate resiliency coming up today on the maritime noon phone-in…
9:49 … well this summer was another record year for all of the wrong reasons with the terrible droughts, higher temperatures and an increase in wildfires we’ve been seeing across the Maritimes.
Some researchers and environmentalists are arguing that we need to change our approach to forestry, they argue that some conventional forestry practices such as cultivating softwood monocultures, in other words forests of only spruce and pine, might be making our forests more vulnerable to fires.
So today we’re asking on the phone in about forestry and woodlot management and we want to hear from you.
How concerned are you about wildfire risk in your wood lot, what are you doing to make your wood lot more climate resilient? 1-800-565-1940 is the number to call to join the conversation or you can send an e-mail at marnoon@cbc.ca. 10:44
Anthony Taylor is an Associate Professor of Forest Ecology and Management at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton. His research focuses on better understanding how climate will impact and affect forests and how we can use forest management to adapt to and mitigate climate change.
He’s joining us today from our Fredericton studio. Welcome to the show Anthony… I have to admit making a woodlot more resilient to fire sounds like a bit of a David versus Goliath task. How much control do you think we actually have?
AT: Well I can see why you think that I mean in your introduction when you describe the magnitude of climate change that we’ve already experienced, and the this past season it was extraordinary…. it was several degrees above normal in terms of temperature and we had some weeks, just I’m thinking of the beginning of August [when] the temperature records were broken by quote a wide margin.38°C for instance up and around Miramichi area , and then just this last week October 6th, here in Fredericton we had temperatures up around 31°, again smashing all time records.1200
So when you when you experience that, …it does seem sort of like a David versus Goliath scenario but you know having said that though, there are things that we can do to our forest to make them more resilient and to adapt to these climate changes that are upon us.
I guess the thing that I think about is that there is a certain amount of climate change that is baked into the system now and so there is a certain amount will have to contend with.
BM: right so I guess there’s a few different areas to explore. Here one is deciding what we plant, other solutions may be you know fire burns, these types of things. So what are some of the things we can be doing to try to brace ourselves for not just climate change but specifically forest fires?
AT: there’s all sorts of things. I think for me, the one of the best ways to approach it for an individual woodlot owner is to start off of what’s your objectives for the woodlot that you’re managing?
…in my mind every woodland owner should have a forest management plan developed… you know they should seek out the advice of a registered professional forester or certified forestry technician and develop a forest management plan.
And it doesn’t have to be big and complicated but what that process does, it begins to get that woodlot under, think well what is it do I want to do with my woodlot?
you know, depending on what your objective is for your woodlot, that will change what activities you do to that woodlot to make it more resilient to climate change.
And that will vary if your objective as a woodlot owner is to grow balsam fir and spruce as a timber species; that that’s fine if that’s your objective, there’s just certain things that you’ll have to take in consideration to mitigate the effects of climate change. 13:45
Or if your objective is to maximize carbon on your woodlot, there are other things you might have to do. Or the question with fire that you brought up, you know if you as a woodlot owner would like to make your woodlot more resilient to future fire then there are some activities, and we can go over them too, that you can undertake as a woodlot owner to help with that.
BM: so let’s go over that then just as a for a moment or two before we get onto other points. I mean there are certain species, spruce and fir for example which are more flammable right? Well first of all why are they more flammable and how do you, I guess counteract that as you try to plan your woodlot?
AT: Exactly. And that’s the thing to be clear onto…that under the wide variety of tree species we have in the Acadian forests, Wabanaki forests, we have here we have about 32 of them, but … the northern boreal conifers species like spruce and fir are highly highly flammable and [IT] is to do with the chemical composition of their needles and their bark and that sort of thing; and those species, they evolved in cold climates like the boreal forest where they depend on fire in order to propagate themselves and to contribute to ecosystems productivity there. 14:55
But here if you’re if you’re thinking about future wildfire and if you have a forest dominated by spruce and fir, then that that forest is going to be more vulnerable to fire because they’re more flammable species.
BM: so guard against monoculture?
AT: well I guess you know if you’re a small woodlot owner and you’re thinking what can I do now to help reduce the vulnerability of my woodlot to wildfire, I like to think of it at two different scales… to begin think about the landscape level, your entire woodlot – what are some activities you can undertake?
LANDSCAPE-LEVEL MITIGATION OF WILDFIRE
And some of them are quite practical in nature; just as an example: At the landscape woodlot level, even maintaining and creating good road and trail access can be important; roads and trails can, one, they provide access to the wood lot if there’s a fire, so the right people can get in and help combat the fire; but roads and trails can also act as fire breaks too. So maintaining good road and trail access in a wood lot is something that every woodlot owner can do.
Another thing that someone might not typically think about, but is I mean we have over 80,000 woodland owners in the maritime, so we have a lot of them, and they all have property boundaries, and good woodlot management you should you have your property boundaries well flagged out and blazed… that’s just good practice but one thing you could do to help again mitigate the potential dangers from wildfire is to consider creating more of a buffer zone around those property boundaries, you know clearing those property boundaries so you have a wider property boundary that might help reduce the spread of fire from an adjacent property.
But maybe it doesn’t necessarily have to be an empty space, that space could be then filled with…deciduous shrubs or hardwood species so you’re creating kind of… a fire retardent as buffer around your property as an example.
BM: And a fire break in your mind, you mentioned roads and trails there. Obviously trails would be smaller than most roads; do you need it to be… at least a meter wide? What [are] you thinking of as far as width when you talk about a proper fire break? 17:04
AT: That’s the thing, I’m not a big fan of too many roads and trails ’cause it fragments the landscape, but in terms of the practicality aspect of a firebreak, having something in the order of… 5 to 10 meters, sort of in that range, I would think it would help anyways.
And it’s not just restricted to the property boundary or the roads and trails to0, even again, when you’re thinking at the landscape level, or your woodlot, think about some critical infrastructure.
If you have buildings and barns or power lines that you want to protect, having again a strip of less fire-burnable hardwoods around those sorts of things can help.
SOFTWOOD/HARDWOOD DIVERSITY AT THE LANDSCAPE LEVEL
Or if as a woodlot owner, you have spruce and fir stands and you want to maintain those spruce and fir stands, one thing you could do to help protect them or maybe help protect other forests from burning is to strategically place your stands within your forest woodlot; maybe surround those more conifer dense stands with hardwood stands so you have a diversity of different stand types within your woodlot. 18:11
So those are things that you could think about at the landscape level and then we can get into it a little later on but there’s also things you can do to individual stands as well to protect them from wildfire.
FIRE MITIGATION AT THE LEVEL OF THE INDIVIDUAL STAND
BM: Well I was wondering how far thinning and spacing go to reduce the spread of fire – is that a worthwhile endeavor?
AT: Yeah and then that’s a good segue segway too. So then if we zoom in now to just the individual stands within your woodlot there are different things that you can do to help out.
Like one example would be, and maybe in some of those more mature conifer stands that you might have on your woodlot, you could consider reducing the fuels, the ladder fuels in those stands by doing some pruning.
Now in some big woodlots, maybe that’s not practical but in some cases it is, and people enjoy getting out and doing that sort of thing. So you know pruning the branches of some of those trees, that can help in terms of ladder fuels and that just helps to reduce the chances of, say, ground fire spreading to the crown.
…it’s good practice maybe in some of those stands to try to maintain a gap of 2 meters or more before, between the understory and overstory.
So those are some things.
CLEANING UP WINDFALL
Other things might be, well if you have experienced a lot of wind storms in the Maritimes, Fiona being the last big hurricane going through, and some of those, specially conifer stands, if you have a lot of windfall then cleaning some of that windfall up because that windfall does act as fuel when you have the dry kind of conditions that we had this past summer. 19:43
BM: I was wondering about that because… environmentalists and biologists we talked to tell us that they like to see that deadfall remain on the ground because it’s so important in providing nutrients and habitat. So are you suggesting that trying to find a happy medium there?
AT: That’s what I would say. I agree too, …it’s natural to have a certain amount of deadwood on the forest floor, it provides a lot of other ecological services in terms of habitat and carbon storage and that sort of thing.
But it’s finding those happy mediums you know and I think that’s the fun and beauty of being woodlot owners, that you can sort of play around with some of these things, sort of stand by stand.
And maybe in some of those stands you might consider if you do have a significant blowdown, cleaning some of it up, I mean it’s not going to be a perfect solution but it might help reduce the chances of something burning or burning less. 20:37
ENCOURAGE SPECIES DIVERSITY AT THE STAND LEVEL
And then just lastly in terms of stand management, another thing that you could do..is encourage species diversity, tree species diversity, in some of those stands. [For] some of the stands maybe woodlot owner is more particularly keeping them dominated by spruce or fir or pine – that’s fine but when you can, or if you have a preference, then maybe encourage more hardwoods in terms of mixtures ’cause it’s well known and well established that the hardwoods are less flammable than the softwoods.
BM: Well if you’re just joining us, this is the Maritime Noon phone-in and today on the program we’re talking about forestry and woodlot management and then we want to hear from you. How concerned are you about wildfire risk in your woodlot, what are you doing to make your woodlot more climate resilient. The number is 1-800-565-1940 or if you prefer you can send us an e-mail at marnoon at cbc.ca. 21:27
Anthony Taylor is with us. He is an Associate Professor of Forest Ecology and Management at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton and his research focuses on better understanding how climate will impact and affect forests.
You just mentioned there Anthony, increasing the species diversity and you were using the word “encourage”. Is it the more gentle approach do you think is what is required here? How do you feel about mandating the increase in species diversity for woodlots, at least on Crown land?
AT: … it actually is becoming more the case on Crown land anyways now,in particular in Nova Scotia where they’ve now transitioned to ecological forest management there, so that is mandated to a certain extent already there.
On private lands I guess it’s a whole other story that could be a whole other show in terms of how do you best persuade a population to do more of that whether it be through mandates or and incentives. 22:34
I would like to see perhaps more incentive, more of the carrot approach. I’m currently not aware of any incentive programs in the Maritimes that do that other than there are silvicultural funds available for those who want to apply for them to to carry out silvicultural treatments that do encourage species mixtures.
BM: Well maybe we’ll hear from folks and their ideas on that particular topic or as I say in general making your woodlot more climate resilient in these times… we’re going to get some comments from listeners in a moment.23:00
24:03 Carson Lee is on the phone from the Shediac area in New Brunswick…
CL: Good afternoon Bob [and] to your guest. I’m not a big woodlot owner, I do own a small piece of property outside down here in Moulton and I didn’t do a whole lot of work and forestry until moving to New Brunswick. But one of the things that I did is that I made my driveway accessible and wide enough that the property that boundaries mine.. I’m not sure if it’s Crown land or private land, but I think one of the things that folks can do is make sure that there’s enough accessible roads for firefighters and equipment get in.
Because it doesn’t matter how much equipment you have and you can’t get to where the fire is… versus marriage to watch it burn and that can itself be a problem… maybe the government can help owners of lots, depending on the size, with putting in access roads. Building a road is not cheap.
BM: … as Carson says it’s nice to have some nice clear access in the case of a fire so that fire responders can get there quickly.
AT: exactly, that speaks to that point I was talking about earlier when doing your woodlot level planning, one of the first thing you can do is just to make sure you have clear access. And that access provides a means for firefighters to get in to fight a fire but also can act as a fire break.
IN NOVA SCOTIA, THERE IS GOV SUPPORT FOR ROADS TO WOODLOTS
And I should mention too, I’m not as familiar with New Brunswick and PEI, but I know in Nova Scotia there is a Forest Road funding program that’s available to woodland owners that they can apply for each year to help with that sort of thing. So you could contact Forest Nova Scotia, that’s a group in Nova Scotia and they are the ones who administer the program and may be able to help up with that.
BM: OK Carson before we let you go, you’re in the Moncton area and of course wildfires were part of the, your landscape and your story over the past few months in that part of the province. How will you feeling during that time knowing that you do border woodland ?How much was it on your mind during the summer? 26:20
CL: I did my preparations early when I first acquired property as I’ve spoke about this in previous programs, I maintained buffer between my property and the adjacent property which is still unoccupied; looking at the corner ofed that piece as well but like I said I’ve the first thing I did was make sure I arm myself with a trash pump and I use rainwater harvesting just in case there’s any outbreak of a fire. But of course I don’t live on the property … but as I said one of the key points that I would like to emphasize that if there was some, and I know your guest mentioned funding, I wouldn’t want that because I don’t own that amount of property but I certainly think that that would go a long way in assisted in putting in infrastructure roads, and as he said it would also act as a fire break when there’s a road between properties. 27:16
BM: Alright Carson thanks for the call… go ahead, Anthony wanted add a point
AT: Just one thing I want to mention for folks like Carson is that well I would encourage any woodlot owner in the Maritimes to reach out to their local private woodlot cooperative, or marketing board here in New Brunswick… that’s their role, to provide information on resources to things like funding for roads and that sort of thing.
BM: Beyond wildfires, Anthony, what are some of the other, I guess biggest, threats posed by climate change when it comes to the health of woodlots?
AT: …when we were talking about the importance of diversity earlier, it’s, I’ve started to sound like a broken record after a while, but that also plays into a lot of the other threats as well.
And I guess when you think of the disturbances that affect our forests, the three big ones here in the Maritimes are wind, fire and spruce budworm.
And if you take something like wind for instance, again, now that the effect of climate change on wind in the Maritimes, it’s still, like highly uncertain…when it comes to how climate change is expected to affect fire, it’s much more clear that it’s going to impact and increase the frequency of fire weather. 28:34
SPECIES COMPOSITION MATTERS IN RELATION TO WIND AS WELL AS TO FIRE
But now wind is a lot less certain, but I guess you could say confidently that we’re not going to experience any less wind, and if anything probably more wind. But when it comes to managing your woodlot, how do I manage my woodlot so that it’s more resilient to wind….if there are increases in wind?
And work that I’ve done, and others have found, is that again species composition matters. Some work that we did in Nova Scotia after hurricane Juan was studied, we looked at all the various areas that hurricane Juan affected, you know in the early 2000s, and we looked at the species composition of those stands before the storm impacted them.
And we found [after hurricane Juan] that species composition was a major factor controlling the severity of blowdown in those stands; where stands that were dominated by, again, spruce and fir, had a higher probability of blowdown; but those with the higher hardwood or white pine content had more., much more, resilience to the wind. 29:33
So again. managing stands with some species diversity, hardwoods and Pines in this case could help increase the resilience to he wind as well.
BM: And so many people looked around their properties after some of those major storms, including Fiona, and obviously saw the trees that have been felled by the wind and those that looked like they might survive only to find out years later that they’ve been sort of under attack; the spruce bark beetle, for example, having it having its day on PEI for example where all kinds of trees have sort of fallen to that pest because the trees weakened and that’s obviously makes for a good meal for those spruce bark beetles.
Are there in that particular case, so you just cutting those trees out to try to minimize the spread of that beetle, or are you just waiting for the life cycle the beetle to change? What are you looking for there as far as management? 30:30
THINNINGS IN RELATION TO BLOWDOWN
AT: well it depends on the stand type, and you have to be careful with thinning and then how it affects the stand to wind resilience. Like the other thing, other than you know controlling species composition of your stands to make them more resilient to wind; if you do need to do harvesting and you’re considering doing some forms of partial harvesting within your stand particularly to stands that are heavy just spruce and fir, then the next thing that you really want to think about before you do any of that partial cutting would be like, what’s the location of the stand?
And because you really want to avoid doing that on areas where, like higher site types like you know the tops of hills or sites that are much more exposed to the wind and both New Brunswick and Nova Scotia have Wind Atlas resources on the Department of Natural Resources websites where you can go and you can see what’s the wind exposure of various sites within your woodlots. And that may help you decide where you should be doing that partial cutting ’cause once you begin to do partial cutting, that begins to disrupt the canopy.
And as soon as you open up the canopy, that can have a significant effect on the residual trees and that would be the last thing too on this, as if you ever go ahead and do thinning, is, it’s general convention in this area that we’re doing partial cutting we take 20 to 30% or more of the basil area or the crown closure. And I think that’s too much in this region, given the amount of wind that we have and we should probably be doing our thinnings a bit lighter, closer to 10 to 20% when we do so. 32:00
BM: Help provide a little more support? When that wind does start to blow?
AT: Exactly like again, it’s just really good science behind it. If you have a dense canopy, that really helps distribute the effect of the wind in terms of their dynamics of the stand but also those trees close together with their interlocking crowns and roots support one another through wind.
And if you think that taking out only 10 to 20% is not feasible for you, then my suggestion would be just to leave it alone and wait till it comes to rotation and then maybe cut the whole thing. 32:41
BM: Alright Mark Daniel sent us an e-mail, ‘says “I live in Colchester county in Nova Scotia and here Irving sprays glyphosate to mitigate hardwood growth allowing only their desired, and in brackets, super-flammable black spruce to grow. How are we to plant a biodiverse wood lot in those conditions?
AT: Well I guess one way to look at that is that you know when you’re managing forest, a forrester has various tools at their disposal in their forester toolbox, if you want to think about that way. And tools like glyphosate which is a herbicide that we spray to reduce the amount of broadleaf hardwood species is a tool that foresters can use if that’s your objective. And so if your objective is to is to promote conifers, spruce and fir, well then I guess it’s that your prerogative to do so. 33:36
But it’s not going to for instance increase the diversity of the species on the stands, it’s kinda reduce it in that case.
BM: Yeah how much would it spread from property to property I guess too.
AT: I don’t think too much…. l they’re they’re pretty sophisticated now in the way they do implement these sprays. So if you’re an adjacent landowner there may be some carryover effect but I know there’s a lot of attention paid in terms of providing buffer zones around where they spray and where they do their spraying.
PHONE-IN: ON PROTECTING COTTAGES
BM: OK let’s go to the phones… Mitchell Vino is on the line from Dartmouth high Mitchell welcome to the show… are you a woodlot owner ?
MV: No, well in a way I am because I own part of what was my family property but that’s not really, it’s a little too big for me to deal with. But I have two acres on a lake in Queens county and it’s mostly hardwood but that’s probably a misnomer, there’s pines and a few spruce which aren’t very healthy and there’s quite a few Beech trees which are diseased so they have their own issues. But I’m wondering, I’ve cut back some of the Pines that are close to the buildings on the property but I wonder what should I do with just the dead wood that falls if I should gather up.. should I ship it and if.
So what should I do with the chipping? And when I took the Pines near the house down… they weren’t logged quality pine, so I took the basic stem of the tree as firewood but I just piled up the branches which could be quite volatile I suppose. So I’m wondering what should I do with that which falls and with the remnants of that which I cut down? 38:32
AT: is there is there a cottage or building on the property?
MV: yes there is, a house and what I would call a wood shelter rather than calling it a shed.
AT: How big was the property?
MV: About 2 acres, there is a fairly steep hill, it’s like a side hill that has a private road at the top part of the development and a lake at the bottom.
AT: you know what I would suggest in terms of fire resiliency and protecting your camp, your infrastructure: there’s a great organization called FireSmart Canada and they have they’ve got a good website that provides some very helpful tips to homeowners in terms of … how much of a buffer you should be leaving between your home and the forest, and there’s different different zones and what activities and what things you should do in each one of those zones.
And so I would highly recommend to consult the website because they’ve got some really practical down-to-earth rules that you can follow and that would provide some insight into some of the questions that you’re providing now.
But you know but in terms of where to pile some of that slash or some of the debris that you’ve cut, of course I’d want to keep it away from the camp you know, so it’s something ever did happen. In terms of collecting and cleaning up the deadfall that falls around it, I think you could do so to a certain extent and there . could be some benefit of that I think the main thing would be in your case though would be maintaining, creating those buffer zones. And again that that FireSmart website provides some real good information on how to go about doing that.
MV: OK great advice.
BM: alright well thanks for the call. 37:32
Today on the show were talking with small woodlots and forestry management ….we had a really brief clip of you Anthony off the top of the show and you were making the point that, in a lot of ways, our climate is steering towards the climate that is more typical of southern New England, and you talked earlier too about how there are some species that adapt to those changing weather conditions.
ON NEW SPECIES/HOW THEY CHANGE AS WE TRAVEL SOUTH
I’m wondering about new species though. Is there a list that you’re starting to look at and thinking, you know, what some of these trees which we might have passed over before, might fare better in our climate going forward?
AT: Yeah there are there is a list of what we call winners and losers and those species that will become better adapted to the climate here as it warms and those that will become less maladapted you know as the climate warms.
I guess one practical way of doing this and thinking about this would be if you are inclined to take a road trip and start at the border of Houlton ME and Woodstock NB and then drive down the Interstate and drive to Boston, for instance,
If for those of your listeners who have done that drive before, as you make that drive, you see a natural transition in the forest happen, and you see now all of a sudden decreasing amounts of spruce and fir, and you see increasing amounts of things like pine and oak and even you can some hickories and other sorts of things. 39:12
So you can see that transition taking place, and that just taking that drive will give you a little bit of insight in terms of well the types of conditions and what they’ll be conducive for here over the next 25 to 30 years.
Because over the next 25 to 30 years the climate is expected to warm, to a climate that’s more similar to Massachusetts, Connecticut sort of thing.
BM: wow, so we could end up seeing sort of that transition then over time.
AT: the issue with that though is that of course forest trees don’t have legs, so they can’t get up and move….
BM: You’ve got to plant them…
AT: and then the magnitude of climate change is quite rapid, so… to make your wood lot more resilient or adapted in terms of species, then it will require some assistance on our part.
But I guess one of the advantages we have here within the Acadian forest is that we do have a mixture of both cold and warmer-adapted species, and so that’s where maybe promoting some of the more warm-adapted species may become more important; or if you’re really keen on growing those colder adapted species, which a lot of people are in this region ’cause it’s the main feedstock to our industry, there are some things that you can do to to help protect and promote them even under a warming climate. 40:25
I just want to draw your attention to Natural Resources Canada[which] has a really great website called Canada’s Plant Hardiness and on that plant hardiness website they have some great models, illustrations that will show the current distribution of each of the tree species within our region and then how that tree species distribution will change over the next 25 to 75 years given different magnitudes of climate change.
And it’s open to the public, anyone can go and look at the website, and when you go on that, you can clearly see that, yes, there are some species that will clearly become maladapted,..the climate is going to change in such a way that this is just not suited for them anymore, and then there’s going to be some clear winners.
PHONE-IN: COMMENTS FROM A WILDLAND FIRE-FIGHTER ON ACCESS AS AFFECTED BY BLOWDOWN AND GRASS ON ROADS
BM: OK, well as you said off the top some winners and losers in all of this.
We’re going to head to Hants county here right now… Eric Pick is online, hi Eric… are you a wordlot owner? [yes] So how are you bracing yourself for climate change and wildfires and everything else?
EP: well there’s a lot of things that happen in the wildland right now. I’ve been a wildland firefighter for 40 years and couple of things… one thing I think were into, whether we like it or not, climate change is extremes. We right now in West Hants we’re living through one of the worst droughts that we’ve ever had in my memory anyway. That is making things extremely difficult for the current day firefighters.
The next thing I’ve got on the line is blowdown. I know they would like people to leave blowdown, or some of it, but if you have a fire, even if that fire is not real aggressive, firefighters can’t go into that blowdown’ we dealt with that with Juan. And you have patches where you just can’t go there ’cause the firefighter can’t escape if things change and things do change on the fire line.
So the more that you get [blowdown] cleaned up the better it is for anybody to come in and try to work with a fire or any other action on your lands.
Finally one other thing here is the roads and trails situation. We have roads on our woodlot and we also lived through that 2023 flood that dropped, I don’t know how many inches of rain in an awful hurry around here, and a lot of work roads were of course washed out. 43:19
One thing about it, if they grass over, they can stand a certain amount of water running over them before they wash it out. If they are bare, they are gone. We have couple places where they were bare, they washed out’ we had a couple lots of places where they were grassed over, you can see where water went over the road but it didn’t wash them out… so grass will not make it as good a fire break as the bare road would, but it also perhaps will make it so you can get there. it’s expensive to repair road washouts and so on so forth.
FIRE-FIGHTER COMMENTS ON INCREASING AMOUNTS OF RED MAPLE
Some of the things that I’ve worked on over the years, and right now I am seeing changes in the forest, but one of the major changes here in forest composition, really, seems to be the spruce-fir forest reverting to Red Maple and from there the Red Maples kinda taken over. Your guest probably has some experience with that perhaps and Red Maple is not terribly volatile and we seem to be getting a lot of it naturally.
BM: OK well those are those are a lot of points to go over there, Eric. I really do appreciate the call. Anthony what about that the Red Maple point first of all? 44:50
AT: yeah those are some good points. In fact I was jotting the one down about another reason why to clean up some of the dead fall, too, I guess a better access for the forest fighters,,, to get into an area.
It’s a good point but yeah, in terms of the Red Maple, well you’re asking earlier Bob about the winners and losers and probably one of the biggest winners in this region in terms of the climate change impacts would be Red Maple.
And anecdotally I’ve heard different woodlot owners and contractors tell me that they seem to be in their lifetime noticing more Red Maple, and some of that might be some of our management practices.
But I wouldn’t doubt that some of it is, you know, the amount of climate change that’s taken place and it’s when you look at those those models that I was telling you about on the Natural Resources Canada website, red maples, [is] one of those species that’s expected to do really well along with species like red oak or ash species; basswood you know would be another example, white pine, hemlock.
But species like balsam fir and spruce, and balsam fir in particular, …the weight of evidence suggests that they’re going to be the biggest losers in this region. 45:58
BM: interesting. Well Eric, again thanks for all of those points. We are going to move along to another caller now and head to Cape Breton. Elizabeth Cusack is online,,, how are you doing Elizabeth…[ I’m doing fine thank you] So are you a woodlot owner?
CAPE BRETON CALLER HAS QUESTION ABOUT MANAGEMENT PLANS/USE OF GLYPHOSATE
EC: yes I own that over 100 acres in…and I’m partial owner of another large lot in East Bay.
BM: Alright, so how much is climate change on your mind?
EC: well quite a bit quite a bit, but I have a specific question, if I could ask it …So in the old days what was then called Lands and Forest, now DNR in Nova Scotia, used to require you to agree to the spraying of glyphosate for it was 2-4D and all of that stuff but like glyphosate for a forest management plan to be are implemented in Nova Scotia.
So I wanna know what the requirements are now and whether in fact government carries out these forest management plans, or whether it has to be done privately, and what the cost is, so [a] three-part question but primarily I’m concerned about whether to have a forest management plan that has anything to do with government ownership or sponsorship, you have to spray glyphosate or agreed to it?
… Needless to say I didn’t renew the forest management plan on my property when I when it got to that stage.
BM: Alright, interesting. Anthony did you wanna respond?
AT: sure no well just out of curiosity Elizabeth, when was it that you had the that plan written for you?
EC: That would have been maybe 35 to 40 years ago. So it’s a while ago and it did result in me losing 5 acres to a guy who came in without proper authorization, but that’s a long, long story long forgotten.
AT: Well it makes sense, like during the 1970s, eighties, there was at that time we call it the sort of the height of the sustained yield forestry here in this region where there was a wide promotion of planting spruce species, spruce plantations, and then herbicides like glyphosate were effective at controlling the vegetation of those.
But that, no that is not a requirement today to have a forest management plan done. And to have a forest management plan done on your own private property, it doesn’t have to be affiliated with the government what so ever; it could be as simple as you reaching out to well it’s something you could actually do yourself if you were versed enough in the area,
But if you if you felt uncomfortable or didn’t think you had the skills to do it yourself then reaching out to a local registered professional forester or certified forestry technician, or in your area there in Nova Scotia there should be some local woodlot owner cooperatives… I’m thinking of the Federation Nova Scotia Woodlot Owners or the Nova Scotia Woodlot Owners and Operators Association, those types of groups. They have all of good websites. Find the group that’s nearest to you and reach out to them and they have the resources and connections to help you write that plan.
And in some cases, like in New Brunswick and I’m aware that the woodmarketing boards, they have resources to, in some cases, budget each year to write those plans for you.
But there’s no, definitely no requirement to have spraying as part of that. 49:23
EC: Very quickly I’m on a waiting list with Cape Breton, and to have my property considered for the planting of diverse local vegetation on my some of my empty acreage so that I don’t know if that plan is still available or if it’s available Anywhere else in Nova Scotia but it was a grant that ACAP was was rspearheading and so that’s something that people can look into is planting natural vegetation, of a diverse kind, instead of trees that aren’t native to Nova Scotia.
AT: you know one thing I think is really important that encourages well for all woodlot owners to have a forest management plan, you know written or conducted for them. But again like I was saying at the top, is that through that process, you as a woodlot owner then can think about what are your objectives for this woodlot, what would you like to see here? Is it to grow Timber or is it for recreation, carbon, and it’s your objectives that are going to influence what things you do and decide to do for that woodlot.
EC: well since I’m about 76 years old, it’s not for me, it’s going to be further for the coming people who live in the in Nova Scotia.
IN CLOSING
BM: well Elizabeth thank you for the work you’re doing and also thanks for the call here today, really appreciate it … that’s about all the time we have Anthony, so thank you to you as well for your help in answering these questions today and bracing for climate change. Some tips on the table there that people can take away and obviously if anybody has something thing else to add, they can always leave a message at 1-800-565-5463. But thanks for much of your time Anthony good talk.
AT: thank you I feel like we just scratched the surface on the topic but I’m sure we’ll be chatting again about it at some point but thanks for your interesting thanks for having me
BM: indeed we will get you back. That’s Anthony Taylor is an Associate who is Professor of Forest Ecology and Management at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton.