CBC'S GORMAN NAILS IT!

Michael Gorman has posted a brilliant item on radio, tv and the net.  Check it out here.  

As dealt with elsewhere on this blog, in Jack Pine's Forest Notes, and all over the press and media, the Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources, ignoring thousands of volunteer hours donated by Nova Scotians like you and me, had the audacity to axe the province's Natural Resource Strategy including and especially one key fundamental:

It was agreed we would reduce clearcutting to no more than 50% of our total harvest.  

Last summer, while everyone was at the beach, they deep-sixed that goal, indeed basically chucked the whole Strategy. 

Then they signed away management of ALL the Crown land in Western Nova Scotia, 1.4 million acres, to a consortium of 13 mills, the largest of which are huge non-Nova Scotian companies.  

If you can figure out DNR's hopelessly complex Harvest Maps and, though unpaid and probably not a licensed forester, in 20 days you can formulate a sufficiently articulate argument to counter to their planned harvest,  who do you hear back from? DNR?  No.  WestFor, of course.  Check out their website - they are custodians of the harvest maps.

Though we Nova Scotians spent $111m to "Buy Back the Mersey" to turn the corner on rapacious harvest methods,  who's in charge now? Not you.  Not me.   The mills.  Are they harvesting quick and dirty to feed their corporate bottom lines, buzzing off vast swaths of the province, or are they stewarding our asset intelligently, allowing the trees to grow, increase in value, provide millions of dollars of natural ecological services?  According to Gorman's piece, they're adding insult to injury hiring out of province workers to cut down our birthright.  So much for jobs, jobs, jobs.  It's been argued that 10% of our provincial debt has gone to prop up this highly touted industry.  Ladies and gentlemen, this is a raw deal.  It is time to speak out!