Citizen investors buying woodlots to prevent clearcutting in Nova Scotia
Company’s first property is located in the Earltown area
A new company is preserving Nova Scotian forests by purchasing land and supporting woodlot owners with the help of citizen investors concerned about clearcutting.
“Trees are nature’s solarpowered carbon vacuums,” said Growing Forests CEO and founder Dale Prest. “And we need to get them to work pulling as much carbon back out of the atmosphere as we can now.”
Increasingly, aging woodlot owners are cashing out their properties as part of their retirement savings plan or because they do not have family members around to inherit them. Usually, through an informal rural network, the limited options are to liquidate as much cash value as possible out of the land to either bring in a clear-cutter or sell to one.
Through a corporate structure, the investors offer an alternative net-zero emissions route, pooling their resources and purchasing properties at risk of being clear-cut.
“We came up with the idea of Growing Forests as a way for those of us rural citizens and Nova Scotia citizens who wanted to see healthier forests in our communities, to pool our resources, offer these woodlot owners fair market value and keep the forest intact and manage them for multiple values beyond just the cheap fibre they can produce today,” said Prest.
The investors are a broad base of ownership with representation across Nova Scotia, each investing small amounts. So far, there are 33 confirmed investors, with more to come. Structured as a community economic development investment fund, qualified investors can receive a nonrefundable equity tax credit from the province. Their current maximum goal is to garner $1.2 million, and they have gotten $440,000 so far.
Investor Bob Bancroft used some savings he garnered. He is well acquainted with the Prest family and said he’s in it for the “long haul” with Prest’s vision.
“My wife and I, we’re not rich, but you don’t want to put your money into something that’s destroying nature to make a profit,” said Bancroft.
The wildlife biologist, who is president of Nature Nova Scotia, said strategically-cut forests should be let to grow back like how they traditionally were to promote diversity and keep them intact, letting fallen wood return to the earth and promote future forest growth.
“As a shareholder, I know I’m going to be putting my money into something that’s not only going to eventually produce some revenue, but it’s also going to protect the biodiversity of forests… there’s an opportunity for folks who believe that nature does a better job of managing than we do.”
Prest drove a skidder (log hauler) before ever driving a car — his family has been
generations managing forests for in Mooseland, N.S. He said he was disenchanted with forestry school out west and later earned a masters in soil science, studying how forests
carbon. could capture and store The Growing Forests concept was in his mind for a while and became a pandemic-born project.
Prest describes forests as “nature’s solar panels” and rural communities’ “most ubiquitous asset” throughout the province.
“With a healthy, rural forestry sector and healthy woodlot sector, we can have a healthy rural environment,
unfortunately, rural communities. And with the way the forest industry has developed in Nova Scotia, that’s not what we see… forests are continually degrading and losing health, losing carbon, losing vitality, and no longer able to support rural economies and rural communities.”
At the headwaters of the Waugh River is the company’s first piece of property purchased from a woodlot owner last February — 140 hectares outside of Earltown.
“We were able to work with a woodlot owner, purchase a property (and) come up with a deal that helped them in their estate planning, paid fair market value and commited to continuing to manage the property in an ecological fashion going forward,” said Prest.
The property covers a large section of the Rogart Mountain Trail, a popular hiking and snowshoeing loop, intersecting about one kilometre from the Sugar Moon Farm parking lot trailhead. They are “thrilled” to be engaging with trail enthusiasts as stewards of the land, especially as more people throughout the province see the outdoors as a place for low-impact recreation.
With his 10-month old and his dog, Prest checks out an old logging road, discovering an old fire pond and topsoil berm along the way — evidence of humans now returned as incredible wildlife habitat. The area is mixed with northern hardwood species and softwoods in the valley, near an old homestead and former fields.
Prest describes the finds as forensic ecology.
“You can see the old stumps in there where people cut trees before,” said Prest. “You can learn a lot about a person by walking through their forest.”
Now, they are scoping out new properties and encourage owners to consider this way of preserving their legacy for generations to come. The company continues to conduct community engagement sessions throughout the province, including an upcoming one at the Earltown Community Centre on May 11 at 6 p.m.
He said the response has been “remarkable,” with some owners saying they will consider selling to them when the time comes.
“We knew that there were a lot of woodlot owners that were struggling with succession planning, but I’ve been really blown away by the number of people that have reached out to me… it just goes to show the need,” said Prest.
Enjoying the scenery from high on his father’s back, young Issac is a reminder that the world he faces in the future all depends on how people take action today — with forests being just one part of the bigger picture.
“Increasingly, we’re waking up to how important our forests are to fight climate change,” said Prest. “Healthy forests store carbon, and when we clear cut them, that carbon gets released and the soils continue to belch carbon
decades into the atmosphere for to come.”