Heart of N.S. forestry industry
Where clearcutting is happening and what’s being impacted
SYDNEY — Clearcutting is a topic at the heart of Nova Scotia’s forestry industry, with a long, controversial history.
In Cape Breton, the sector is vast and spans both Crown-managed lands and private woodland suppliers.
'WORKING FOREST'
The Department of Lands and Forestry reports total Crown lands within the Cape Breton Highlands as 92,000 hectares, with the total area of working forest within that being 57,000 hectares, or 62 per cent of Crown land within the Highlands. The Department of Lands and Forestry defines working forest as “an area where harvesting is occurring or could occur,” and it could be on Crown or privately owned land.
“The remaining 35,000 hectares of Crown land outside the working forest is proposed parks and protected areas,” said a Department of Lands and Forestry spokesperson.
Clearcutting does not occur within the boundaries of the Cape Breton Highlands National Park.
Department of Lands and Forestry has a review process called integrated resource management, which is used to review every proposed harvest plan and determine if it’s appropriate and meets all requirements for operating on Crown lands.
“The integrated resource management considers many things including (but not limited to): the provincial strategic forest management plan, property lines and land ownerships, adjacency to protected areas, wildlife habitat, wetlands, forest maturity and old growth, geological information, known recreational activities, areas of significance to Mi’kmaq, and requirements for special management practices for species of conservation concern.”
The total area of Crown lands considered working forest in the Highlands is 57,000 hectares, or 6.5 per cent of the provincial Crown’s working forest.
The spokesperson said there is no forest harvesting in the Highlands at this time.
PAPER CUTS
Port Hawkesbury Paper’s licence for forest management covers nearly 523,000 hectares of Crown land across the seven eastern counties of Nova Scotia. Not all Crown land in Cape Breton or eastern Nova Scotia is licensed to Port Hawkesbury Paper.
Half of Port Hawkesbury Paper’s harvested wood comes from Crown-managed lands. “On average, roughly 25 per cent of our Crown harvest by volume comes from the Cape Breton Highland region,” said a Port Hawkesbury Paper spokesperson.
Port Hawkesbury Paper said as of 2019, 48 per cent of managed Crown land has been set aside as protected area or left untouched.
Port Hawkesbury Paper said 85 per cent of its licensed land has been identified and managed as high conservation value forest, which means it falls under one of these categories:
- Forest areas that are globally, regionally and nationally significant
- Forest areas that are in, or contain, rare, threatened or endangered ecosystems
- Forest areas that provide basic services of nature in critical situations
- Forest areas fundamental to meeting basic needs of local communities
Once a high conservation value forest is identified, the forest manager — in this case, Port Hawkesbury Paper — decides how these areas will be managed, “to maintain or enhance the values that are present. Where values exist, monitoring is needed to show that the prescribed management is effective.”
MONITORING MARTENS
Cape Breton’s population of American Marten was listed as endangered in the Nova Scotia Endangered Species Act in 2001, according to Port Hawkesbury Paper.
“The distribution of the present [marten] population is highly fragmented with a small subpopulation on the northwest side of the highlands, largely inside the boundaries of the Cape Breton Highlands National Park, and a second sub-population in the southeastern highlands,” according to the Department of Lands and Forestry.
The separation of the two populations is wide enough to reduce the chances of movement between them.
“Each of these sub-populations is further fragmented by habitat patchiness. This separation has occurred within the last 30 to 35 years and is the result of habitat alteration from timber salvage operations following a massive spruce budworm infestation. Remaining marten habitat remains fragmented and under threat of harvesting.”
What has been labelled the marten habitat management zone in the Highlands spans 72,725 hectares. As of 2019, close to 70 per cent of that was protected from clearcutting. Special marten habitat management zone practices apply to the 20,373 hectares where forest harvesting does occur:
- 12-14 standing and live mature trees per hectare must be left evenly spaced throughout the harvest site
- These are in addition to all other requirements of the Wildlife Habitat and Watercourse Protection Regulations
- Large yellow birch trees should be left standing where possible
- Special management practices for commercial thinning operations in marten patches;
- Harvest sites should maintain at least 100 cubic metres of coarse woody debris per hectare and mean maximum diameter of downed logs should exceed 22 cm.
“Seventy-eight per cent of our annual average harvest within the marten habitat management zone far exceeds these requirements,” said the Port Hawkesbury Paper spokesperson.