Nova Scotia review of forestry practices needs to tackle clear cutting: group

Nova Scotia’s Liberal government is expected to announce Wednesday a promised independent review of forestry practices in a province where clear cutting remains highly controversial.

The review was first announced in the lead-up to last spring’s provincial election and became a key part of the party’s environmental platform.

Ray Plourde, of the Halifaxbased Ecology Action Centre, said Nova Scotia’s forest is getting younger and scrubbier with each clear cut, which he said is how about 90 per cent of wood is harvested.

He said wood is now being cut almost exclusively for pulp mills and for electricity-generating biomass operations like the one run by Nova Scotia Power in Port Hawkesbury.

He said that simply produces “low-value, high-volume commodity products.”

“Our future cannot be in shipping chips and pellets to Europe, we don’t have a forest that can sustain that.”

Plourde maintain the review isn’t needed because of the exhaustive work done as part of the province’s 10-year natural resources strategy, released in 2011.

Still, Plourde sees the review as an opportunity to restore a balance that was abandoned when the government announced last year that it was moving away from a goal of reducing clear cutting on Crown land by 50 per cent.

“That (target) absolutely needs to come back,” said Plourde. “Governments always talk about finding a balance and say we need to balance economic and environmental. The natural resources strategy committed to that 50 per cent target partially based on science, but also based on balance.”

During the election campaign, Premier Stephen McNeil said the review was the result of listening to market access concerns expressed by private woodlot owners and to objections raised by those concerned about harvesting levels and practices on Crown land. The government says about 63 per cent of wood harvested on Crown land in 2016 was by clearcut.

Plourde said according to the federal government’s National Forestry Database, about 90 per cent of all harvests in Nova Scotia are done by clear cutting - “a little less for Crown (land) and a little more for private.”

He said the Department of Natural Resources and the industry are out of step with what the public wants.

“It doesn’t want to see the forest industry disappear ... but it wants to see a forest industry that is more in sync with society’s aspirations for what our natural resources can do in terms of providing a variety of services including economic benefits.”

Jeff Bishop, executive director of the industry group Forest Nova Scotia, said he believes the review will pose no concerns for the sector, although he was careful to say that would depend on the terms of reference.

Bishop said the province’s new position on clearcutting is based on science that examines what is grown on the land base and what can be grown there in the future.

“We were not enthusiastic about the idea of a cap because to us that went against the science. It was an artificial cap if you will.”

Bishop also takes issue with national statistics he said don’t account for activities that take place on private land that don’t have to be reported.