Province complicit in tragedy of mainland moose

Last week, the government of British Columbia halted logging operations on several parcels of forest in an effort to protect core habitat for the 157 caribou of the Argonaut Valley near Revelstoke.

Meanwhile, here in Nova Scotia, the forest industry, represented by Westfor, was granted a temporary injunction against a group of citizens who have spent over 50 days camped on a logging road in a remote area of southwest Nova Scotia. Their hope is to protect core habitat for the remaining 100 (or less) mainland moose of that region.

While British Columbia listened to its citizens who spoke out about the plight of the caribou, in Nova Scotia, the many phone calls, emails, media articles, radio interviews, television news stories, a petition with 27,133 signatures, as well as the blockades and last weekend's support gathering, have fallen on deaf ears.

Where is the current Minister of Lands & Forestry, Derek Mombourquette, in all of this? He seems to have gone underground, leaving a clerk assigned to issuing form letter emails of blah-blah-blah to more persistent callers and writers.

Requests for a meeting have been fruitless. Apparently, Mombourquette is too busy for as little as a Zoom meeting with representatives of the blockade.

Meanwhile, touting his environmental platform, the former minister of lands & forestry, Iain Rankin, who in May 2020 was ordered by Nova Scotia Supreme Court Justice Brothers to fulfil certain ministerial duties pertaining to species at risk, specifically including proper protection of the mainland moose, seems to have nothing useful to say after stepping down as minister and skating away to pursue leadership of the Liberal Party in hopes of becoming premier.

All we hear or read now are pathetic mumblings about how the forest industry will be following special management plans to protect the moose — plans that, in reality, will allow hacking down most of the forest so long as laughably paltry “moose clumps” of trees are left standing in what is otherwise a moonscape of ruts and tangled debris crisscrossed by logging roads.

Add to this, the recent ridiculous claims by industry that all this hacking down of forests can actually help improve moose habitat. If so, by now, we should be seeing moose popping up in clearcuts across the province. Instead, we see the moose population in tumbling freefall, reduced from a few thousand to perhaps under a hundred, while Lands & Forestry continues blame the decline on ticks, brainworm and poachers — all of which are deadly problems exacerbated by aggressive forest harvests, lack of mature forest habitat and road building that radically alters the ecology of core moose habitat, opening it to entry by poachers and the white-tailed deer that spread brainworm.

What a sad, sad story. We are sacrificing some of the last core habitat for mainland moose in southwest Nova Scotia because our politicians are more intent on pleasing their corporate masters than on listening to the growing tumult of voices from the citizens of this province. What a tragedy for mainland moose and Nova Scotia citizens alike.