Clearcut harvest plans generating community animosity
Approved clearcut harvest plans on Crown land in Allendale and Ohio are being met with opposition from local residents.
“There’s a lot of real animosity towards what is going on,” said David Levy, deputy warden for the Municipality of Shelburne, which is being, he said, “prompted by the planned Ohio and Allendale clearcuts. Quite honestly, it is against the basic principals of the Lahey report.”
Both William Lahey, author of An Independent Review of Forest Practices in Nova Scotia, and Marcus Zwicker, general manager for WestFor Management, the company that holds the harvest licences, attended a Shelburne Municipal Council committee of the whole meeting on Nov. 13 as did about 40 residents.
Zwicker outlined his company’s harvest plans, as approved by the province, and is “following the guidelines,” said Levy. “He’s doing what he’s mandated to do. Whether you like those guidelines or not is another matter.”
Lahey, meanwhile, spoke about the whole approach to forestry management and that should be changed with more consideration to ecological forestry management and placing more weight on biodiversity over economic factors, said Levy, adding it is a position that was supported by residents in the audience.
“Residents surrounding both clearcut areas are deeply upset,” said Levy. “They don’t feel they were consulted properly and those that have offered opinions feel their voices were not heard.”
The Lahey Report was presented to the department of Lands and Forestry in August. The province has yet to respond to the 45 recommendations.
“The ball is in the provincial government’s court,” said Levy. “So far we’ve heard nothing. We have an extremely well thought-out report and have not heard anything… People are saying implement the report and that will at least make them feel the mechanisms are in place for safeguarding our forestry.”
THE CLEARCUT HARVEST PLAN
Marcus Zwicker, general manager for WestFor Management, said he expects the Allendale clearcut harvest will start sometime this winter.
“It all depends on market conditions, weather, there’s a lot of variable factors,” he said, adding once a harvest plan is approved sometimes it takes up to two years to operate that stand.
The Allendale site was a harvest site that Bowater had intended to operate in 2012, building roads into the majority of it before it was bought back by the Crown, said Zwicker.
“That block was still in the operating que. That’s why we’re there today,” he said.
Both the Allendale and Upper Clyde/Ohio sites consist of primarily Balsam fir as well as spruce. Harvest of those species would likely be milled into stud wood by a WestFor Management member mill such as Freeman Lumber in Queen’s County, or pulp wood if there’s a market for it - which isn’t always the case, said Zwicker. Other species would include white pine, which would potentially go to Lewis Mouldings in Weymouth to be made into house mouldings. Hardwoods would be used for a multiple of purposes including saw logs at a mill, domestic firewood or in the manufacture of hardwood siding.
In southwestern Nova Scotia, Balsam fir is a very short-lived species with about a 40-year lifespan, said Zwicker. “The current management regime is towards the more long-lived species compositions. That are more resilient to forest infestation patterns like bugs and insects that Balsam Fir is very susceptible to, those sorts of things,” said Zwicker, adding a multi silverculture type of treatment is taken when replanting a clear cut area with tree species that have more ecological value, such as red spruce, hardwoods or white pine, not Balsam Fir.
“We follow what’s in the guidelines” set out by the province in the licence conditions right across the province, said Zwicker. “We have to do a pre-tree assessment that looks at soil, windthrow hazards, vegetation, species composition, the age of trees, what kind of shape they are in and determine the harvest prescription based on that for the individual treatment area.”
WestFor Management was formed in 2016 by 13 mills that previously had individual timber licences to operate on sections of Crown land, some dating back 60 years. The company is licensed to operate on about 50 to 60 per cent of the Crown land in southwestern Nova Scotia.
As for the Upper Clyde/Ohio areas approved for clearcut harvest, that operation “won’t start for a while yet. We’ve got to do some significant roadwork to get in there and we can’t do any roadwork that has any putting in bridges or pipes in the winter. We only can start that June 1 so it’s going to be a while yet,” adding it could that could take a few years.
THE LAHEY REPORT
In the executive summary of his report, William Lahey concluded “protecting ecosystems and biodiversity should not be balanced against other objectives and values as if they were of equal weight or importance to those other objectives or values.”
Instead, he said, “protecting and enhancing ecosystems should be the objective (the outcome) of how we balance environmental, social, and economic objectives and values in practising forestry in Nova Scotia.”
Lahey gave a number of reasons for this conclusion, but the primary reason is ecosystems and biodiversity are the foundation on which the other values, including the economic ones, ultimately depend.
He also concluded the Nova Scotia Endangered Species Act must be fully and rigorously implemented in respect to forests on both Crown and private land – as it currently is not. “I also recommend an open, transparent, collaborative, and inclusive review of the ecological efficacy and adequacy of existing regulations that limit harvesting within 20 metres of bodies of water and of others that require clearcutting to retain ‘wildlife clumps,’” he wrote, and recommended the adoption of new regulations generally prohibiting full‐tree harvesting when combined with clearcutting, on both Crown and private land.