This page is a subpage of Lichen Camp
(www.nsforestmatters.ca/The Camps/Lichen Camp/Recent Posts -2025 Lichen Camp)
Nina Newington, Aug 13, 2025
The Lichen Camp conversation we planned a while back for this Monday happened in the Centrelea Community Hall, not out in the bone dry woods. It was fun and quite a bit cooler than it would have been.
It felt good to get together with a few of the people who kept camp going for 114 days this year. Building community is part of protecting our forests.
Looking round as we tucked into a colourful and startlingly healthy array of dishes, I was struck by the range of skills and knowledge at that table. Art, insects, fungi, lichen, public health, gardening, farming, climate solutions planning, figuring out how to make shit work. The thing about Lichen Camp is that so many people put their particular skills to work to make it happen.
So what did this year’s Lichen Camp achieve, besides strengthening our connections? Well, we kept the forests on the peninsula between Corbett Lake and Dalhousie Lake standing.
We didn’t know this when we moved camp down to the head of the logging road into the peninsula on April 18th, but a Freedom of Information request filed at that time revealed DNR planned for WestFor’s contractor to come and cut the peninsula as soon as they were finished cutting the area around last year’s camp. The expected date to start cutting at Corbett was the end of May.
Instead, cutting was halted around the old camp on May 20th or thereabouts, apparently out of respect for nesting season and the requirements of the Migratory Bird Convention Act. The equipment was removed before that cut was completed and has not returned.
No effort was made to cut the Corbett peninsula while camp was in place. We made good use of that time, identifying 4 more species at risk lichen occurrences in the 2 cutblocks. These have all been reported. The harvest plans will have to be amended again to remove the required buffers.
Also, DNR has now identified and protected 3 small stands of old growth forests in these cutblocks. Two are stands we asked DNR to assess back in January. It’s not clear yet when the assessments happened. For years DNR insisted publicly and internally that there was no old growth forest in the Corbett cutblocks. These patches of old growth forest are only standing because citizens got in the way, back in 2019 and perhaps again this year.
Can we guarantee that DNR and WestFor will leave the Corbett peninsula forest alone until the whole Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Area is formally evaluated for protection? No. They might still decide to go after the 20 or so hectares that are still available for logging, out of the original 57. If Camp had been able to remain in place we would have gone on looking for species at risk. Lichens, yes, but also the endangered black ash. There’s a likely area we flagged but didn’t get to yet.
I’m sure the government understands that we are watching. The community of people committed to protecting Goldsmith, and specifically the Corbett peninsula, keeps on growing. So do the forests. According to DNR’s own survey, half the forest in the original cutblocks is ‘mature climax forest’, meaning it is old forest that, left alone, will soon qualify as old growth. Our message is simple: leave it alone!
Lichen Camp 2025 — Day 114
Nina Newington Aug 5, 2025
Well, faced with the province’s decision to close the woods at 4pm today, announced at 1pm, we needed to move fast to take down Lichen Camp and we did. 11 people came to help with barely any lead time. What an amazing crew of people.
The turnout wasn’t altogether surprising though. While I haven’t done the final tally, I believe 40 different people have camped since we set up on April 13th. We are building a community of people who care enough about protecting our forests to get out and do something about it. It feels good.
It feels good to know too that, thanks to our efforts and to DNR (yes, I said that), even less of the 2 original cutblocks is available for logging now than when we set up camp here this spring. We have identified and reported 4 more Species at Risk lichens (2 confirmed, 2 pending confirmation), each of which gets a 100m buffer. That’s on top of the 9 we have identified here since September 2024 when the government lifted the holds on the Corbett Lake cutblocks.
Now DNR is helping to put even more of these 2 cutblocks off limits to logging. To our surprise and pleasure they have identified 3 stands of old-growth forest within the cutblocks. These stands now have permanent protection. They don’t add up to a large area — around 8 ha — but every little bit helps. It’s a bit of a mystery how this came about but that’s for another post.
Suffice to say that a little over 60% of the original 57 ha approved for logging is now off limits. The remaining 21 or so hectares look like Swiss cheese. Will DNR finally accept that the Corbett peninsula should be protected? For years they asserted that there was NO old growth in these cutblocks. Now they have changed their tune. We’ll be watching carefully to see which way the wind blows
And a followup comment by NN Aug 7, 2025:
Lichen Camp packed up because the woods are dangerously dry. People cannot spend time in the forests on public lands. Streams have shrunk to trickles then nothing. Wildlife needs water. This is the climate crisis. In Nova Scotia in the last 5 years we have had a devastating storm, massive wildfires, deadly flooding. Now we are in a drought with crops failing. It is time to link arms and make change happen at every level.
Lichen Camp 2025 — Day 111
Nina Newington Aug 2, 2025
A few days ago I posted some paragraphs from Robin Wall Kimmerer’s ‘Braiding Sweetgrass’ about the Windigo, a cautionary monster. These sentences came to mind again the other day: ‘the consumption driven mindset masquerades as “quality of life” but eats us from within. It is as if we’ve been invited to a feast, but the table is laid with food that nourishes only emptiness, the black hole of the stomach that never fills. We have unleashed a monster.’ (p.308)
At camp, where there is blessedly little signal, I spend most of my time reading, writing, and in the woods, looking for species at risk lichens, yes, but also just looking and being. It is in many ways, the exact opposite of being out in the commercial world.
When I wasn’t at camp last week, I went to the Superstore in Kingston. They were about to close so all the carts were inside and neatly docked together. I really hadn’t noticed the little label on my cart until I was returning it. Crave More, it said. Then I saw that all the carts said the same thing. Crave More. Crave More. Crave More.
Being among the ancient Hemlocks on the peninsula in Goldsmith Lake or in the old forests surrounding Lichen Camp is the best antidote I know to this sickness. There I am in the company of elders, beings who have lived far longer than I ever will, beings that feed everybody. That’s what plants do. They turn sunlight into sugar and feed the beings that feed the beings that feed us and every other living creature. They feed and are fed. In the forest I feel what enough means. I feel enough.
It’s a joy and a relief to be at Lichen Camp, working to protect these forests, to restore our relationship with nature. It’s a break from the madness.
The floating bog on Corbett Lake hovers in my imagination
Post by Nina Newongton, July 28, 2025
The floating bog on Corbett Lake hovers in my imagination. The photographs Huguette D. May took from her kayak convey the strange beauty of the inhabitants of that place. In a time of such ugliness, violence, stupidity, there is also this.
Lichen Camp 2025 — Day 100
Nina Newington, Jul 23, 2025
Has it really been 100 days since we set up camp this year? Back before deer flies and moose flies. Even before mosquitoes and blackflies and the birds that migrated thousands of miles to eat them.
Back in that long ago time, we set up on the logging road where we camped last year, just west of Goldsmith Lake. And very quickly had to make the wrenching decision to move camp, leaving WestFor to log 35 ha within the proposed Wilderness Area we have been working so hard to protect.
We moved to the eastern end of the Wilderness Area, to the peninsula between Corbett and Dalhousie Lakes. Several of us had begun to learn about this peninsula in 2019 when public protests halted logging of these old forests. Back then the Minister of Natural Resources confidently proclaimed that there was no Old Growth Forest in the area they had approved for logging. But guess what? There is.
Three stands have now been recognized by DNR and have permanent protection. Two are south of the current camp and one just to the north. I don’t know exactly when DNR decided these stands met their criteria. I only spotted them on the provincial landscape viewer map yesterday. They weren’t there a month ago.
Before we knew anything about DNR’s assessment of these stands, citizen scientists using camp as a base had already identified Frosted Glass Whiskers lichens – an old-growth indicator — in all three stands. Will DNR finally admit that they should leave this peninsula alone, as people have been saying for years now?
Better yet, will the province get on with assessing the Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Area — and the other citizen-proposed areas — for permanent protection?
There are alarming signs that DNR is going in exactly the wrong direction, recently laying claim to parts of several citizen-proposed areas for perpetual clearcutting. That’s not what happened to the cutblock where we first set up camp. There the contractor, as promised to us by DNR and WestFor, did some of the better ecological forestry that I’ve seen. And then stopped for nesting season. But there is no guarantee that they will not try to add this cutblock to the clearcutting roster in the future.
We just have to keep on keeping on, building up evidence and support for protecting Goldsmith, building community by working together for a common goal — which in the end is a livable planet for all. Nothing too ambitious.
What is amazing is the trust and mutual reliance that grows with each camp. In these 100 days, 32 different people have camped overnight and another 4 have covered daytimes, and nobody has failed to show up or even been significantly late. Nobody. We can count on each other. That’s worth a lot in an increasingly unpredictable and scary world.
A trip to Lichen Camp is always a fun learning experience
Lisa Proulx, Jul 19, 2025
A trip to Lichen Camp is always a fun learning experience! Travelling on the West Dalhousie Rd we discovered a couple of new patches of Swamp Milkweed, our native milkweed that monarch butterflies love! Along the same stretch we also discovered a huge patch of Spotted Joe Pye weed in the ditch. it is often mistaken for the milkweed. Monarchs will nectar from it, but not lay their eggs on it… Their little caterpillars are fussy and will only eat milkweed leaves.  and we spotted a Snowshoe Hare along the edge of the road.

We visited with Nina Newington at camp, strategizing about which areas to explore next. On our last paddle, we found a Northern Red Oak stand that we would like to check out. This is the only area so far that we have found the oak in the proposed Goldsmith Lake wilderness area. In our work at Beals Brook, we found the protected Black Foam lichen on Oak. 
We had a picnic on the beach and then a lovely swim while listening to a Broad-winged hawk calling overhead. Such a glorious feeling to be swimming in a lake and knowing we’re the only ones there!

Back at camp, we had a lovely conversation in the screen tent with local Dick Fox, who was camp sitting for the afternoon. He told us lots of stories about the history of the area.
We will continue to explore and document the complex biodiversity of the area that is the proposed Goldsmith Lake wilderness area.  check out the last picture in this post to see how many species we’ve documented!
Lichen Camp 2025 — Day 96
Nina Newington Jul 18, 2025
‘Summertime and the living is’… lsticky. Research is best accomplished from the kayak. Paddling along the shore looking out for snakes and turtles, for example, seems important.
Many of the birds have fallen silent but loons still laugh in the night and thrushes sing dusk and dawn, as they have since the middle of April. Hermit and Swainson’s. Is there anything lovelier than waking at first light surrounded by their song?
At camp, the horrors of humanity are filtered by poor signal. Instead of the news, I listen to Robin Wall Kimmerer reading ‘Braiding Sweetgrass’ out loud. This is no escape but a chance to go deeper, in the company of someone grounded in an entirely different understanding of the world and people’s place in it. Often I cry. It is good to take the time to feel.
Yesterday what stood out was the chapter on the Windigo, ‘the Ojibwe boogeyman’, ‘a human being who has become a cannibal monster.’
‘It is the Windigo Way that tricks us into believing that belongings will fill our hunger, when it is belonging that we crave.
‘On a grand scale, too, we seem to be living in an era of Windigo economics of fabricated demand and compulsive overconsumption. What Native peoples once sought to rein in, we are now asked to unleash in a systematic policy of sanctioned greed.
‘The fear for me is far greater than just acknowledging the Windigo within. The fear for me is that the world has been turned inside out, the dark side made to seem light. Indulgent self-interest that our people once held to be monstrous is now celebrated as success. We are asked to admire what our people viewed as unforgivable. The consumption driven mindset masquerades as “quality of life” but eats us from within. It is as if we’ve been invited to a feast, but the table is laid with food that nourishes only emptiness, the black hole of the stomach that never fills. We have unleashed a monster.
‘Ecological economists argue for reforms that would ground economics in ecological principles and the constraints of thermodynamics. They urge the embrace of the radical notion that we must sustain natural capital and ecosystem services if we are to maintain quality of life. But governments still cling to the neoclassical fallacy that human consumption has no consequences. We continue to embrace economic systems that prescribe infinite growth on a finite planet, as if somehow the universe had repealed the laws of thermodynamics on our behalf.’ (p.308)
Here, in a tent on a logging road, I listen, read, look for turtles and snakes, and write carefully reasoned letters of protest to Ministers who could be helping to protect 20% of our province from the Windigo madness but instead are proposing cycles of perpetual clearcutting.
The Windigo way is not sustainable. The only question is how much of our beautiful Mother Earth will we devastate before this economic system collapses? I choose to stand with the trees and the turtles, the Hermit thrush and the salamander. I’m not pure. None of us is. We all have the Windigo within us. But we don’t have to feed it.
Lichen Camp 2025 — Day 90
Nina Newington, Jul 11, 2025
After a quick stop at camp to say hello to farmer Steph Warr, an artist, a scientist and a writer went for a paddle on Corbett Lake, inspired by Lisa Proulx’s post about the orchids. Moody lighting and few deerfly (once we were away from the shore) added to the peace and pleasure of the day.
No sooner did we reach the floating bog than the artist — Huguette May — began taking photographs while trying to keep her kayak still.
The scientist — Dr. Elisabeth Kosters — paddled further into the bog and plunged her arm into the muck for an impromptu soil sample. This she laid out in its strata along the front of her kayak.
The writer mainly mooched about, admiring the cheerleader pompom cluster on the lower petal of each Rose pogonia and the gaunt flowers of pitcher plants, while paddling up dwindling channels until there was nowhere to go but backwards. At which point she — I — took slow videos of the bog and sky and forested shore, recording bird song and bug buzz. It was just what the doctor ordered.
I also took a couple of videos of Elisabeth giving us a scientist’s view of the bog, complete with explication of the soil samples decorating her kayak. I’ll post these and some of Huguette’s photos over the next few days.
Lichen Camp 2025 — Day 85
Nina Newington, July 25, 2025
It’s been a busy few days on the research/education/art front.
Artist Susan Tooke arrived at 6am on Thursday to record bird song around camp for a sound project.
Later that day, the founders of Island Reach, Janis Steele and Brooks McCutchen, came down from Cape Breton to camp for 3 nights, take photogaphs, record conversations. In both cases the purpose is to explore rather than to document.
In Brooks’ words, ‘We’re intrigued by what’s emerging at Lichen Camp as we work on storytelling change and opportunity during dark times.’
Check out https://www.islandreachservices.ca/
Of course we had to explore more of the old forest on the peninsula, encountering more very large yellow birch, more of the pit and mound topography that only exists in places that have been forest for a very long time. We’re here to protect that precious ecological continuity.
Lichen Camp 2025 — Day 76
Nina Newington, June 26, 2025
The old Wabanaki forest just south of camp supports a marvellous diversity of life — most obviously at this time of year the birds, singing and flitting among the trees. Many thanks to two expert birders who offered to come and survey the portion of the peninsula where DNR has approved plans to log. Starting near camp at 6am, in short order they identified 37 species, including two observations of the Eastern Wood Peewee, recognized as a species at risk.
Back in 2019 Marcus Zwicker — then the general manager of WestFor, now general manager of Freeman Lumber — said WestFor was not willing to change its harvesting schedule for birds, even though he admitted in the same CBC interview that harvesting during nesting season meant that ‘it would be inevitable that nests are destroyed.’ WestFor’s plan was to log the Corbett peninsula in mid-June, never mind the Migratory Bird Convention Act. They didn’t do it in 2019, thanks to public outrage.
Freedom of Information documents from April suggested WestFor planned to try again this June. But that didn’t happen.
It appears now that WestFor is respecting nesting season. Equipment has been removed from the area around last year’s lichen camp. It’s hard to know what comes next for this part of the proposed Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Area now that MLA Bowlby has apparently declared he made a mistake in assuring constituents that the area was being « actively assessed for permanent protection. »
At Lichen Camp we keep on gathering information about the high conservation value of the area and reporting species at risk finds to DNR. The province still needs to protect 20% by 2030 with an interim target of 15% by the end of next year. The biodiversity and climate crises aren’t going away and nor are we.
In the meantime though, it’s important to celebrate the glory of what we still have and the small gains we make.
It is a great step forward that, this year, WestFor paused logging in the Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Area for nesting season. They changed their schedule for the birds. On behalf of the birds, we say thank you.
Lichen Camp 2025 — Day 70
Nina Newington, June 20, 2025
What a beautiful time of year to be camped out close to old forest.
An ‘intelligent meander’ in the woods on the peninsula between Corbett and Dalhousie Lakes, checking out likely habitat for species at risk lichens, is a journey into the astonishing diversity of life these forests support.
The ‘intelligent meander’ is really a thing, a strategy for surveying for rare species. Basically, you go looking in the most likely places as opposed to setting up a grid and surveying everything within an established plot.
Because the Frosted Glass Whiskers lichen grows on the exposed heartwood of hardwoods, mainly red maple and yellow birch, the intelligent part of the meander involves going to places where you’re likely to find these trees. The lichen also needs humid, sheltered conditions to survive, the conditions old forests provide. So you go looking in old hardwood and mixed wood forest, mainly in the damper parts. But just because you find the right kinds of trees with the right kinds of cracks in the right conditions doesn’t mean you will find Frosted Glass Whiskers.
The Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Area has proved to be a remarkable Goldilocks zone for this rare lichen. You can comb forests in other areas of the province and never find a single Frosted Glass Whiskers. But even at Goldsmith, they aren’t easy to find. You can go intelligently meandering from camp for days in a row and not find a single one.
What you are guaranteed to find are all sorts of other forms of life. An amazing array of spiders and slugs and fungi and slime molds inhabit the cracks and cavities in hardwood trees when you look closely enough. The effort of looking, really looking, is repaid in wonder a thousand times over. The troublesome human world recedes. Eyes that have learned to look for lichens smaller than a pin find the delicious detail of a Cucumber root flower.
And then you notice a tree looking back at you. In the green canopy above, Northern Parula, Blackburnian Warbler, Hermit Thrush sing. We are in the weave, us humans, whether we know it or not.
Lichen Camp 2025 — Day 60
Nina Newington, June 10, 2025
Six years ago 50 people gathered at the end of the logging road that had been driven through the heart of the peninsula between Corbett and Dalhousie Lakes in Annapolis County. We gathered to protest the imminent logging of 57 ha of forest — most of the peninsula. This forest was full of amazing wildlife habitat, from bear dens to the huge, hollow yellow birch that chimney swifts need to nest in. Then as now, it was peak nesting season.
What to do? Heading home after the gathering, leaving the nesting birds to the untender mercies of logging equipment, did not seem good enough. Three of us set up camp on the logging road. Others soon joined, some to camp, others to comb the woods for birds on their nests. We hoped that the Migratory Bird Convention Act — which forbids the damaging of nests and eggs and the birds sitting on those nests — would buy the forest time while we worked with the local and provincial government to protect the area.
Within a week we learned a hold had been put on the harvest plans. The forest was spared, temporarily at least. We breathed a huge sigh of relief and packed up our tents.
That hold, probably courtesy of our MLA and then Premier, Stephen McNeil, stayed in place until 2023. Documents acquired through freedom of information requests show that the hold was then quietly lifted and, at WestFor’s insistence, the old harvest plans were updated and approved. These harvests plans are nowhere to be found on the Harvest Plan Map Viewer, the government site where the public gets to see all the harvest plans for public (crown) land. But they most certainly exist and they have been prioritized by DNR. Why? As part of the proposed Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Area, the peninsula is now under formal evaluation for permanent protection. WestFor wants to get in there and cut before the area can be protected, and DNR is helping them.
According to DNR’s own documents, 31 of the 54 ha approved and reapproved for logging are «mature climax» forest. That means old forest well on its way to becoming old growth. This is exactly the forest we most need to protect as we work to meet the government’s own target of protecting 15% of the province by the end of next year, and 20% by 2030.
As it turns out, and in spite of years of denial by DNR, there is actually a stand of old growth forest in the area scheduled to be cut. It has now been snipped out of the harvest area that was reapproved in 2024, as have 100m buffer zones for 8 species at risk lichens. If the logging had gone ahead in 2019 — or, for that matter, earlier this year — the old growth stand and the species at risk lichen habitat would have been destroyed.
As things stand now, the latest harvest plan, amended in March, has been reduced to 31 ha. With Lichen Camp in place, we continue to survey the wonderful array of birds that call these forests home, as well, of course, as looking for endangered black ash and species at risk lichens. We’ve learned a lot since 2019.
Today Lisa Proulx and I explored a new-to-us section of forest on the east side of the logging road. Once we had waded through a balsam fir hell, we found ourselves among big old red spruce and yellow birch. The current harvest approval calls for taking 50% of this forest. That seems like unimaginable ecological vandalism.
We will keep documenting species at risk in these cutblocks — another confirmed occurrence is being reported to DNR tonight — but the very idea that DNR is working hand in glove with WestFor to enable them to log this peninsula before the area can be protected is maddening. Log now, protect later makes no sense. Feel free to remind your MLA of this fact.
Lichen Camp 2025 — Day 50
Nina Newington, June 1, 2025
(Link is to the video)
Big thanks to Richard Bennett for catching the beauty and extent of the peninsula between Corbett and Dalhousie Lakes.
And the ugly slash of the logging road that was driven through the heart of the peninsula in 2018. 20 hectares at the far end was partially harvested that same year. In 2019, public protest halted the logging of another 60 hectares. Now it is time to get the area properly protected.
This peninsula is part of the proposed Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Area. The area is under formal evaluation by the Department of Environment for permanent protection. But DNR is still working on getting the peninsula logged. In March they approved an amendment to an amendment of a zombie harvest plan that does not even appear on the publicly available map of harvest plans across the province.
Even DNR now acknowledges that there is old-growth forest on the peninsula as well as lots of old (“mature climax”) forest. The argument they used this spring to justify logging the area around last year’s Lichen Camp — it’s just 50 year old managed forest — does not apply. What will their new justification be?
Log Now, Protect Later is not the way to protect biodiversity and restore ecosystems.
It is time to look after the gems we have left.
It is past time DNR started working with — not against — Environment to get 15% of our province protected by next year, 20% by 2030.
Lichen Camp is already proving to be a helpful base for further research in the area as well as a gathering place for workshops and guided hikes in these beautiful woods. It is highly likely that zombie plan will have to be amended yet again.
The floating bog on Corbett Lake
Jul 29, 2025, Post by Nina Newington
The floating bog on Corbett Lake hovers in my imagination. The photographs Huguette D. May took from her kayak convey the strange beauty of the inhabitants of that place. In a time of such ugliness, violence, stupidity, there is also this.
Lichen Camp 2025 — Day 46
Nina Newington, May 28, 2025
Beauty and ugliness, both.
The joys of camp: waking to more and more birds arriving in the forest. Lying in my sleeping bag, recording birdsong through the canvas walls. Too many different birds singing in the course of a single minute to show in one screenshot.
But then there is the other side. Taking CBC’s Phlis McGregor up to the site of last year’s Lichen Camp. Witnessing DNR’s new sign and, even more disturbing, what was done to the sign we left in place, the sign acknowledging that “We are in Kespukwitk, District 1 of the 7 Traditional Districts of Mi’kma’ki. This is Unceded Land. Please respect the land, the Treaties of Peace and Friendship, and all our relations.”
Why is it so hard to respect our kin and their needs? Why is DNR enforcing Log Now, Protect Later? Why can’t our government respect the wisdom of the people whose guardianship of this land over thousands and thousands of years is rooted in the knowledge that we are not separate. All creatures are my relations. Msit No’kmaq
Lichen Camp 2025 – Day 43
Nina Newington, May 25, 2025
Camp came through the storm just fine, thanks to the surrounding forest. The wind was a reminder of how important it is to keep forests standing, young and old. The trees shelter each other and all the creatures that live in and among them, including the astonishing array of birds that are arriving every day, grabbing a bite to eat and getting down to the business of mating and nest building and egg-laying, of incubating and feeding the young.
The damage done to bird populations by logging during nesting season is well known. A law making it illegal to harm almost all nests and nesting birds, the Migratory Bird Convention Act, has been on the books since 1917. It is long past time to start enforcing it. The birds that depend on old forests, like the Blackburnian warbler, have seen steep declines in their numbers since the 1980s in the Maritimes. They need us to protect their habitat and to stop destroying their nests.
It was a relief to see this assurance in MLA David Bowlby’s April 23rd letter to a constituent concerned about the logging going on in the proposed Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Area:
« All operations adhere to federal migratory bird regulations, including seasonal restrictions to avoid nesting periods. »
What exactly are these ‘seasonal restrictions’?
The Medway Community Forest Cooperative, which operates on Crown land, has implemented a ‘silent season’, ceasing all forestry activities (excluding tree planting) during the peak of nesting season.
Is WestFor following suit? When will these seasonal restrictions be in place? How long will they run for?
The logging in the 32 ha surrounding last year’s Lichen Camp site should be wrapping up now. A silent season – a pause in all forestry activities except tree planting from the end of May until the end of July — would protect most of the birds that are covered by the Act. Mid-August would be even better, but some progress is better than none.
Perhaps, by next spring, or at least the spring after that, in the whole 3900 ha Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Area, all the birds will be able to nest in peace, including the ones who nest early and on the ground, like the beloved Hermit thrush. They will face the dangers of life in the wild, and the new dangers humans have created by burning fossil fuels for energy, but at least they and their nests won’t be crushed under the tracks of logging equipment.
That’s a grim image but it’s real. Birds will sit on their nests until it is too late, protecting their eggs, protecting their hatchlings. Such courage, devotion, determination. We need these traits too, those of us working to protect the birds and their home in the forest. There’s beauty and joy and sorrow and pain in caring. Who knows where listening, really listening, to the song of a hermit thrush will take you? Into a tent in the woods, perhaps…
Lichen Camp Day 36
Nina Newington,
May 18, 2025
It’s been a month since we moved our camp from the spot where we camped last year down to the head of another logging road, the road into the peninsula between Corbett and Dalhousie Lakes.
We woke to the songs of Hermit Thrush and Winter Wren the next morning. They are still the first to sing at dawn, but joined now by so many others returning from their long migrations, feasting on blackflies after flying thousands of kilometres, checking out mates and nest sites.
The PUC recording device I set up for 3 days last week and managed to download at home with WiFi (thank you Bev Wigney) documented a stunning array of birds. Some like the Blue-headed Vireo and Ovenbird we’d been hearing, others like the Magnolia and Black and White and Palm Warblers are just arriving.
Migratory birds return to the same forests year after year. It feels good to know this forest is still standing, undisturbed, thanks to the efforts of all the people who came together to stop logging here 6 years ago and all who have been working steadily for the past 3 years to win permanent protection for this peninsula as part of the proposed Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Area. More on what went down in 2019 in another post. Suffice to say birds, birders and campers all played a part.
Lichen Camp Day 30
Lisa Proulx & Nina Newington
Nina asked me to post this for her today…FB seems to be having a conniption! It’s from last night.
Thank you Nina for putting your whole heart, soul, time and energy into teaching us all how to protect our precious forests. ❤
Spring is springing, birds are singing, blackflies are hungry. At camp this evening, when the wind rose and the temperature dropped, I got the screen tent set up. Then went for a wander down the road to admire the Hobblebush in bloom which led to me following a little game trail into the woods. Hermit thrush sang back and forth across a lovely swamp. Big hemlocks reached out with graceful arms from the mossy bank above the swamp.
Walking back up the road the flag of the 7 traditional districts of Mi’kma’ki came into sight, unfurling in the breeze. I felt — I feel — grateful to be camping in this unceded land, doing what I can to protect these forests for all my relations. Msit No’kmaq.
It feels peaceful and good to be doing this simple thing in a crazy world. I know the other campers feel this way too.
Lichen Camp 2025 — Day 25
Nina Newington, May 7, 2025
A busy day at Lichen Camp yesterday. Deb Kuzyk painted a lovely new sign. Then CBC’s Moira Donovan came to tape a segment on lichen hunting to save forests for “Now or Never”. That should air on CBC radio on May 15th. (We’ll let you know when the date is confirmed.)
Supper was a joint effort featuring a magnificent rhubarb custard flan thing plus weed bread with dandelion and nettle (Silva), an excellent salad with raspberry dressing (Lisa), homemade sheep cheese and a surprising pasta with chimichurri (Nina). The surprise was that I thought I was bringing pats of basil pesto from the freezer, not pats of an Argentinian herb sauce intended to accompany grilled meat…
Then we replaced the canopy on the cook tent with a slightly less battered one (thank you Alexa) so that Silva can try to resurrect or recreate the now irreplaceable original. It was a happy moment, earlier in the day, when I mentioned that we needed to find someone to do just this and Silva instantly volunteered her unsuspected skills.
All that before Karen Achenbach joined us at dusk and we embarked on an Owl Survey for Birds Canada. The wind level was a bit marginal but (after a couple of calls to people with more experience) we gave it a go anyway. The owls decided to sit it out. Except for the one that flew in close to camp just after the official recording period was over…
So the day ended with four of us running the roads in the dark. We got back to camp at 1am.
All in a day’s work at Lichen Camp. Not really. It’s usually a bit more relaxed.
On “Intelligent Meandering” in the citizen proposed GLWA
Lisa Proulx, May 4, 2025
We continue to look for Species at Risk (SAR) in the proposed Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Area, in an attempt to protect not only the old growth forests, but the younger and mature areas in between, to ensure the ecological continuity and continuous habitat that so many of our vulnerable species need for future survival.
We spend many hours most weeks “intelligently meandering” through the beautiful woods searching for new locations of SAR and also other species that we haven’t documented yet.
Lichen Camp 2025 — Day 21
Nina Newington, May 3, 2025
From Friends of Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Area
(Public Facebook Page)
Lichen Camp 2025 – Day 19
Nina Newington, May 2, 2025
With permission from the District Chief of Kespukwitk, the flag of the 7 Traditional Districts of Mi’kma’ki is flying over Lichen Camp again. It is an honour and a responsibility, to be camped on unceded land, working to protect the forests and all who depend on them, human and other than human.
Msit nokoma
Good news (with reservations): Goldsmith Lake is now “under active evaluation for permanent protection, a process that requires thorough ecological, cultural, and socio-economic analysis to ensure durable outcomes.”
This statement comes from a letter MLA David Bowlby wrote in response to the deluge of mail he received. The mail was about the logging that began on April 12th in the proposed Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Area. The response letter was most likely crafted by DNR and government communications strategists. Variations of it were sent out on April 23rd. That’s quite prompt for government.
There is an established process, conducted by the Protected Areas Branch of the Department of Environment and Climate Change, for assessing areas for permanent protection. The process takes about a year. It includes socio-economic analysis and formal consultations with the public.
The paragraph stating that Goldsmith is “under active evaluation” ends: “Public input, like yours, is vital to this process, and I encourage you to continue contributing through formal consultations.”
*Considering that, until recently, the Minister of Natural Resources claimed not to know anything about a proposal to protect Goldsmith, the news that the area is now in the evaluation process is very good news indeed.*
It is not clear when this process of formal evaluation began but it is probably recent — there are no references to it in FOIPOPs up to January 23rd of this year.
There is another sentence in this same paragraph that is both good and bad news: “The Department of Natural Resources and Environment and Climate Change collaborate closely to advance protection priorities while respecting existing legal harvest approvals. Your call for urgency is noted, and I have shared your request with both ministers to reinforce the need for expedited assessment where possible.”
The good news is that DNR and Environment and Climate Change are finally working together. By all accounts, this has not been the case. Instead DNR has been obstructing the process, resulting in miniscule progress towards the protection targets and a stunning example of government incompetence.
The bad news lies in that “while respecting existing legal harvest approvals.” In the past, when an area was formally being assessed for protection, there was a moratorium on any logging, road-building or industrial activity in the area until the assessment was complete. That is how it is done in other parts of the world. It’s hard to assess the conservation value of an area while it is being actively degraded. But that, it seems, is the plan, no doubt thanks to DNR.
Not to give you whiplash, but there is some slight good news within the bad news clause. DNR to date has not only been trying to log existing harvest approvals, they have been working on approving new ones for within areas already proposed for protection. For example, they put a brand new harvest plan up for comments on the Harvest Plan Map Viewer at the beginning of November. The plan was for an area within the proposed Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Area. DNR received a mighty response from the public: 44 emails opposing the plan plus at least 6 comments made via the HPMV. I don’t know if DNR plans to go ahead and approve this new plan in spite of the fierce public opposition. Perhaps not, if they are only going to cut “existing legal harvest approvals.”
*More on new and existing plans for another post. For now, savour the good news that the Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Area is in the formal process of being evaluated for permanent protection. It is a perfect candidate to help the government meet the commitment it made to protect 15% of our province by the end of 2026.*
Whether or not you personally received a version of this letter, please write to MLA David Bowlby to thank him for this good news and remind him to keep on pushing on our behalf for that “expedited assessment.” Mention, if you want, that it is normal practice to pause logging etc. while an area is being evaluated for protection.*
mladavidbowlby@gmail.com
Lichen Camp 2025 Day 16
Nina Newington, Apr 30, 2025
On Sunday, a snapping turtle crossed the road near Dalhousie Lake. Watching it was way more fun than going to look at the logging that has been happening for 10 days just south of last year’s Lichen Camp.
There are things we know. The machinery being used is more modern and precise. The amount of the forest being removed has been scaled back from 50% to 20-30%. The total area of this harvest plan has been reduced by more than half, thanks to the efforts of citizen scientists. But when you see the piles of logs by the side of the abominably wide logging road, the reality of ‘forest removal’ hits.
It’s worse when you follow the ‘extraction trail’ in, stepping on crushed treetops. When you stop to count the rings on the red spruce stump. It was 91 years old and now it’s gone. Look at the machine damage to the bark of a lusty yellow birch. Notice the very large, old yellow birch and red maple scattered through this forest that DNR claims is only 53 years old. Some of this forest was clearcut around 50 years ago, but not all.
It’s not old-growth forest but it is forest with natural diversity in both the kinds of trees and their ages. It is a forest recovering from past ‘forest management.’ And now, instead of being allowed to get on with becoming old and, in time, old-growth forest, it is being ‘managed’ again.
The province’s own Old-Growth Forest Policy is crystal clear that you cannot manage forest into becoming old-growth. Only time can do that. Time and being left alone. Any documented silviculture (forestry) since 1990 disqualifies a forest from being recognized as old-growth.
Old-growth forest is so ecologically valuable because it has had time and the material to develop a complex array of micro-habitats – nooks and crannies – which then support a tremendous diversity of life forms. This happens when nothing much is removed from the forest. Storms will come. Trees, when they fall, lie on the ground, rotting, feeding, sheltering innumerable life forms.
The whole idea of creating protected areas is to allow this natural process to take place. It is the only way we can restore ecosystem health to our degraded forests. Any logging damages this process by removing matter from the forest. Obviously we are not going to protect everywhere. But in the areas we are going to protect, there should be no logging.
Those piles of logs by the side of the road west of Goldsmith Lake represent a theft from the future. In 2022, 196 countries around the world committed to protecting 30% of the planet by 2030. Why? Because we need to restore and protect the health of nature if we and our kids and grandkids are going to have a future. One act of greed at a time, that future is being destroyed.
Lichen Camp 2025 Day 10
Lisa Proulx Apr 24, 2025
I got to spend some relaxing time with my Mum at Lichen Camp last night. The Barred Owl bade us goodnight and the Loons yodelled during the wee hours. Dawn ushered in the Hermit Thrush’s beautiful flute like song just before the Purple Finch exuberantly announced his presence. Much to our delight the Winter Wren took over and twittered off and on all morning!
Then the humans arrived!
We’re always grateful for the good and generous people that come out to support our efforts!
Lichen Camp 2025 — Day 7
Nina Newington, Apr 19, 2025
Woke this morning in our relocated camp to Winter wren and Hermit thrush, then an owl and the wild cackle of a loon. The move went swimmingly yesterday with 11 people making light work of the task.
It feels good to be camped near the old forest on the peninsula between Corbett and Dalhousie Lake. Good to have our base for research and education in the eastern part of the proposed Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Area this year. It will make it easier to fill out the picture of the remarkable biodiversity this whole area supports. There is more old-growth forest to be found here to complement all the stands now recognized around Goldsmith Lake.
And for the education component, this is a remarkably accessible area. Local people walking their dogs and out on ATVs in the sunshine yesterday stopped to chat as we raised the big tent. When we told them about the purpose of the camp there were plenty of thumbs up.
Then today, as part of an Earth Day celebration at Centrelea Hall, Donna Crossland led a guided hike into old forest on the peninsula. 17 people strong, the group included children and parents and grandparents. Some participants have deep family ties to the land we are working to protect.
After a couple of hours of walking among big mama yellow birch and ash and maple, learning about the tale the pit and mound topography tells of wind-toppled forest giants of the past, everyone was ready for a SOOF Soup lunch and activities back at the hall.
Lichen Camp 2025 – Day 5
Nina Newington April 17, 2025
April 16, 6 am. We sat in the tent, drinking coffee, listening to a Hermit thrush. Mostly we heard a very chatty robin but when he stopped for breath, we caught those liquid notes, clear as a rocky stream. Last year, the first one I recorded was on April 24. Several more arrived over the next week. They felt like the voice of the forest, the Hermit thrushes singing first thing in the morning and again in the evening.
It came to feel like a pledge, to keep the peace for the creatures of this forest, for the Hermit thrushes and all the others whose long migration brings them home to this exact place. A pledge to let this 55 year old stand of red spruce around camp heal from the clearcutting and “management” it has suffered over the years.
Moss has carpeted the forest floor. Wildflowers from Blue-bead to Ladyslippers have established themselves, as have many kinds of fungi. It is still far from supporting the amazing variety of life found in the old forest nearby but it is on its way. It is at last storing significant amounts of carbon again, soaking up heavy rainfall and sheltering the older forest from the ferocious winds that blow wherever forest has been removed.
Camping on the abominably wide logging road that WestFor put in down the west side of Goldsmith Lake in 2022 taught us just how critical continuous forest cover is for preserving the shady, humid conditions most forest species depend on.
Last year, DNR let this forest be. They had amended their harvest plans once already by the time we set up camp, scaling them back by 40%. Using Lichen Camp as a base, citizen scientists went on to identify another 18 species at risk occurrences that impacted the parts that were still approved for cutting.
But instead of saying, ‘Okay, it is time to let the Department of Environment assess this area to see if it meets the criteria for permanent protection,’ DNR seems to be helping WestFor to get in and cut what they can, while they can.
On April 13, when we came in to set up Lichen Camp 2025, there was a large piece of equipment parked next to where we camped last year, but none of the usual signage to indicate harvesting was planned or happening. Ordinarily WestFor posts ‘Caution Industrial Work Site’ signs on the roads into the area. These give the ID numbers for the active harvest plans as well as the start date and the name of the contractor.
On April 15 DNR and WestFor officials arrived at camp. We were told we were in an active harvest zone and that we had to move our camp.
Mysteriously, the required warning signs appeared along the road shortly after this meeting. They were backdated to April 12.
For people’s safety we made a decision to move the camp. We will be moving soon, but certainly not leaving the area.
It is hard to fail the Hermit thrush, the forest, our non-human kin. It is a beautiful and joyful thing, to feel connected to a place through working to protect it. It hurts when that place is hurt, as this forest will be. The harm won’t be as bad as it would have been without our efforts but it is still harm.
The harvest plan that has been re-amended and approved does not include the old forest south of camp. But it does cover the 55 year old forest around camp and a little way to the south. In our discussion with DNR and WestFor, WestFor’s Ian Curry said that the contractor has been instructed to take only 20% of the forest. The original removal approved by DNR for this stand was 50%. With many eyes on this harvest, WestFor will probably follow
through on this. They will also probably avoid the hideous rutting seen on recent harvest sites in other proposed protected areas.
Taking 20-30% rather than 50% does represent progress towards a more genuinely ecological forestry.
EXCEPT that it is never “ecological” to log in an area that should be protected. This is so obvious it shouldn’t need saying. But apparently it does.
The Houston government made a legal commitment to protect 20% by 2030, with an interim target of 15% by 2026. Progress has been so slow that, in order to reach 15%, they need to protect 60,000 hectares by 2026. The Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Area is just under 4,000 ha. With over 100 species at risk occurrences and 21 old growth-forest stands, it is an obvious candidate for protection.
The government’s failure to put a pause on logging in areas like Goldsmith while they are assessed for permanent protection is…well, what is the right word? Baffling, infuriating, incompetent? Suggestions welcome.
Please email the Premier, premier@novascotia.ca
Tell him that Log Now, Protect Later is not acceptable. It is time for him to order DNR and Environment to work together to protect the best of what is left of our forests.
If you live in Annapolis County, contact MLA David Bowlby mladavidbowlby@gmail.com
Tell him you want Goldsmith assessed for protection now, before any more damage is done. Tell him you care and you vote.
Lichen Camp 2025 is up and running
Nina Newington, Apr 13, 2025
Happy to say Lichen Camp 2025 is up and running in the same spot as last year’s camp. We — a loose collection of people working to protect the proposed Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Area — are excited to continue with our research and education initiatives. It is our hope that this magnificent area will soon be identified as a candidate for protection to help the province meet its goal of protecting 15% of our lands and waters by the end of 2026.
To date we have identified and reported over 100 species at risk occurrences in this area. We have also identified numerous stands of old-growth forest, some of which have now been assessed by DNR and added to the Old Growth Forest Policy. To date there are 21 stands of recognized old-growth within the proposed Wilderness Area. We have requested that DNR assess another 19 old forest stands to see if they meet the Policy’s criteria. It will be fun to scout for more now the snow is out of the woods.
We will continue to learn about and document the rich lichen life of these forests but this year we are going to focus a bit more on other species too. It turns out that DNR’s survey of American Marten in Kespuktwik/Southwest Nova Scotia identified Goldsmith as one of the few areas where they found these rare animals. The American Marten is in the process of being declared endangered in Mainland Nova Scotia. A DNR trail cam in old forest on the west side of Goldmith Lake caught a picture of one last spring, then last summer Lisa Proulx, one of the citizen scientists working in this area, saw one on the other side of the lake.
And there are birds. Some arenesting already in these forests. Soon there will be many more arriving. Last year’s camp allowed us to document several species at risk here including Olive-sided Flycatcher, Common Nighthawk, Chimney Swift and Canada Warbler. This year we are partnering with Birds Canada in an Owl Survey. We’ll also be offering a nighttime Owl Prowl in the eastern part of the proposed Wilderness Area. And then there is that Northern Goshawk nest we didn’t find last year.
It’s exciting to get rolling again. Please join us for more hikes and workshops this year.