N.S. harming moose habitat
The endangered mainland moose has inadvertently meandered into the clearcutting fray.
“It is time our government woke up to the fact that Nova Scotians are sickened by the wholesale destruction of our forests,” says Nina Newington, spokeswoman for the Extinction Rebellion-led blockade of forestry operations in Digby County.
“We can have sustainable forestry and protect moose and store carbon because that's how people used to manage their woodlots.”
Bob Bancroft knows something about trying to protect moose and forests. Bancroft, president of Nature Nova Scotia, is a wildlife biologist who formerly worked for the province.
“What the moose used to like was a mature forest, that could be softwoods or hardwoods, in the summer to get out of the heat and in winter they needed mature softwood coverage to get out of the cold wind,” Bancroft said.
Bancroft said interspersed landscapes with meadows, lakes, new terrestrial vegetation, aquatic vegetation and not very many roads are “an ideal situation for moose in the backcountry, which is where they want to be because they don't like being around people much.”
PROVINCE HAS ‘SAT ON’ SITUATION
He said the provincial Lands and Forestry department is providing just the opposite.
“They really have just sat on this whole situation,” Bancroft said of the department. “They are just letting the forest companies draw the resources (trees) as fast as the machinery will take it.
“When things grow back on these large cutovers, you get this drying effect that you don't have in a forest when just one tree or a couple of trees blow down. You get a drying effect with the sun going right to the forest floor.”
The sprouts and suckers that grow from chopped stumps in dry clearcuts provide little nutrition for moose, compared with young hardwoods growing from seed, Bancroft said.
Accordingly, moose tend to avoid clearcuts altogether until 15 to 25 years, when regeneration occurs.
Moose require mixed hardwood-softwood stands with at least 25 per cent hardwoods, spread over landscapes for food, he said, adding that herbicide spraying intended to eliminate hardwoods removes an important food source for many wildlife species.
The mainland moose was declared “endangered” in 2003 and Bancroft served for eight years on a subsequent mainland moose recovery team.
“We didn't do one thing for one moose,” Bancroft said. “Everyone meant well but there were no resources. At one point, a company I was working for offered $50,000 to try to get a study done to get a handle on the number of moose and the government wouldn't fund the work.”
‘SUITE OF FAILURES’
The government recovery plan was to identify and set aside core habitats for moose. Government inaction prompted Bancroft and like-minded nature organizations to take Lands and Forestry to court, arguing that the minister had contravened the Endangered Species Act.
Justice Christa M. Brothers agreed with the complainants, citing “a suite of failures of government” in her written decision in late May.
The judge agreed the minister had failed to implement the Endangered Species Acts as it pertains to six representative species that included the mainland moose.
Brothers found that the minister had failed to review the moose recovery plan and had failed to set out core habitat in its recovery plan.
Bancroft said there still has not been a core habitat identified.
“There has not been one core habitat designated because that would mean they would have to stop cutting and what they are doing now is leaving clumps of trees in a sea of clearcut when they should be leaving mature forest areas with smaller cuts to produce regeneration,” Bancroft said.
Jamie Simpson, lawyer for the complainants, said this week that they had asked the judge to set a timeline of six months after the judgment for the minister to provide the applicants and the court with a progress report on achieving the mandatory requirements under the Act for the 70-some species at risk listed but the judge did not grant that request.
“She didn't set a timeline for any of the mandatory things to be done by,” Simpson said, “but I do know that they (Lands and Forestry) have done some things that were ordered by the court.”
PROVINCE: ‘SIGNIFICANT PROGRESS’
A Lands and Forestry spokesman said the department is working on the issues raised by the court.
“Recovery teams are in place for all species and we're making significant progress, this includes the six named in the judicial orders,” Steven Stewart said in an emailed response.
“Specific to the six species listed in the court decision, the department has completed half of the judicial orders and work is well underway on the others.”
Bancroft said it is difficult to determine how many mainland moose exist in Nova Scotia.
“They won't tell us,” Bancroft said of the government. “It's 85 to 100, plus or minus 1,000. They don't have enough animals to get a scientifically sound, statistical number.
“There are very few moose, we know that, but I know of biologists who were told to lower their numbers when they tried to do some counts years ago. The idea is that if there are too many moose out there, then we won't be able to do the forestry we are used to doing.”
ALCES AMERICANA
The mainland moose is a different subspecies (Alces americana) than its much more plentiful cousin roaming through Cape Breton. That moose is from the Alces andersonii species and was brought to Cape Breton in the late 1940s from Alberta after an indigenous population of the same species had disappeared from the island about 50 years earlier.
“Biologists don't want to bring that species onto the mainland,” Bancroft said, referring to mating animals with different genetic make-ups.
Ticks are often blamed for the decline of mainland moose but Bancroft sees ticks as a symptom of the problem.
“An animal gets into poor shape because it can't get enough food, and an animal like a moose needs a lot of food every day,” Bancroft said of the more than 25 kilograms of saplings, twigs, leaves and aquatic vegetation a moose will eat in a day.
“What I found when I was a regional biologist is that if an animal gets into poor condition for whatever reason, then the ticks can take over because there is not as much resistance.”
LAND DONATION
The Nature Conservancy of Canada announced earlier this week that an Ontario donor has offered 566 hectares of land that will help connect parcels of properties along the Isthmus of Chignecto dubbed the Moose Sex Corridor that would enable the free passage of moose and other wildlife between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
The wildlife corridor would help introduce New Brunswick's healthy moose population to Nova Scotia's endangered population.
“Then again, if they don't have the right habitat here,” Bancroft mused of moose migrating across the border to Nova Scotia.
“There probably is still habitat here but they are whacking away at it as fast as they can. What we are doing here is creating conditions that the moose can't find what they need to survive.”