Spotlight on environmentalist Adam Malcolm
Environmentalist Adam Malcolm talks about collective inaction and using social media to educate
EDITOR’S NOTE: Interview has been edited for length and clarity.
RIVER INHABITANTS, N.S. – Regardless of which side of the debate you're on, everyone tends to have an opinion when environmental topics like clearcutting come up.
One Cape Breton voice in particular has grown over the last few months and he's not going anywhere.
Adam Malcolm, a high school science teacher by trade, has founded the Facebook groups "Stop Clearcutting Unama'ki" and "Nova Scotia Species at Risk," as well as the Instagram account@ns.speciesatrisk.
“I turned 40 in November and that's kind of where the rubber hit the road for me as far as not being able to be quiet anymore about things,” said Malcolm.
Malcolm began "Stop Clearcutting Unama'ki" just before Christmas and the other two social media pages in January and they've already gained some steam with hundreds of followers between the two Facebook pages alone.
The Post interviewed Malcolm to learn about the motivations behind starting these pages and what his concerns are for Cape Breton's environment.
Q: Would you consider yourself an environmentalist?
I would say I'm an environmentalist. I've always felt a pretty strong connection to nature, growing up in a beautiful, natural setting and fishing and hunting with my father and older aunts and uncles and cousins from my very earliest memories … but I don't think of that as anything unusual. I kind of think, I don't know, [that] we're all children of the environment, whether we're a bit estranged from our relationship with nature or not. Nature is the reason we're here.
Q: What caused you to start the Facebook group "Stop Clearcutting Unama’ki"? Was there an inciting event?
Not so much. I was following the provincewide [Facebook] group, and probably in the last few months of 2020, I was contributing a bit more. And it came up with the administrators that I was from Cape Breton so one of [them] asked if I might be willing to start sort of a parallel group for Cape Breton. … Because it's a big task to keep an eye on all the proposed clearcuts that are happening provincewide. So, by working at a more regional level there's more eyes able to comb through the harvester map plans and add more local knowledge about what these places are actually like, that are slated to be mowed over. So yeah, I just kind of took it up. But I believe firmly in raising awareness about the harms of clearcutting.
Q: Was there an inciting event that caused you to start the "Nova Scotia species at Risk" Instagram and Facebook pages?
More just the observation that there's all kinds of good information out there but people, more than ever, are getting their information through social media. Whatever comes up on their feed from day-to-day is … a big part of the information that people are consuming. So it's all well and good to have these websites and these PDF documents out there that are accessible but that just having them accessible doesn't put them in front of necessarily very many people's faces. So yeah, [my] species at risk efforts are just an effort to raise the profile of our species at risk in the public conscience daily.
I really am trying to be a voice that's not adding to the polarization of the conversation. I sympathize with people who are worried about their jobs. I sympathize with wildlife and I sympathize with people's need for food, water and shelter. I'm raising my voice but not in anger at anyone. Individually, I think, most of the people I meet are good people and have very valid concerns. My upset, I guess, stems more from our collective contribution — and that includes me, that includes everyone — … our collective contribution to species [being] at risk, moving further towards the brink.
Q: Is there a single memory that you have where you were really enjoying nature or that you think of as your happy moment?
I don't know if there's a specific one but I've always been just really enthralled with wildlife encounters. Encountering a wood turtle on the bank of a river or sunning on a log or some migratory bird that I seldom see. They really capture my attention and my heart now and they have for as long as I can remember. And though I spend as much, if not more time in nature as an adult as I did when I was a kid, those encounters are becoming less and less frequent.
Q: How do you feel about the media’s portrayal of environmental issues?
One thing I really want to say is, I don't like a lot of the language in the newspapers and on radio … when a reporter gets an environmentalist on one side and a representative for the forestry industry on the other side and, kind of, framing these conversations in terms of, you know, “us versus them,” one side versus the other side. Ultimately we're all in this together and we all have to try to be respectful of each other's views but also cognizant of objective reality, not the reality that we would like to be [in] the world.