PREVIEWS of the first two parts in an ongoing series by Nina Newington, concerning 3900 hectares of Crown Land around Goldsmith Lake in Annapolis County. The series appears on Nova Scotia Forest Matters.
CLICK ON EACH PREVIEW to go to the FULL ARTICLE on Nova Scotia Forest Matters.
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by Helga Guderley How do deer keep warm in the winter? Winter is a hard season. While we relish going for a walk or ski in the snow, enjoying the changes in our familiar landscapes, most of us can warm up in our cozy homes afterwards. We enjoy our parkas and warm boots, but how do deer manage? Deer maintain their body temperature at 37C, just like us. To keep their core at 37C when experiencing subzero temperatures, they use several approaches. First, they increase their insulation. In preparation for winter, deer gradually change their coats to have thicker, longer and darker hairs and grow a thicker undercoat. If needed, they make “their hair stand on end” to trap more air in their coats and insulate better. Oil glands help their coats shed water. Choosing protected areas as dens is crucial to overwintering survival. Deer use counter-current heat exchangers to prevent blood from the extremities from decreasing core temperatures. Deer legs are primarily composed of bone, tendons and skin; tissues that can withstand cooler temperatures than the vital organs. Blood destined for the legs leaves the central core in arteries that run right next to the veins that return blood from the legs to the body. The blood that has cooled in the legs warms up before entering the central circulation, whereas the outgoing blood is cooled. Deer reduce their activity in winter, but they do browse on available plants (the yew and rhododendrons in my garden are very popular!) to obtain energy and nutrients for their organs and for their microbiome. Under harsh winter conditions, wild ruminants may break down their organs (muscle in particular) to provide nitrogen to the microflora in their rumen. This ensures that when food becomes available in the spring, they can digest it properly. Even though it looks uncomfortable to spend winter out in the elements, deer have clearly figured out how to do it! Helga Guderley is a retired professor of Biology, having worked at Université Laval for 30 years. She has served as an adjunct at Dalhousie for 14 years. She is a founding member of the Healthy Forest Coalition, and has taken the health of Nova Scotia's natural environment, in particular its biodiversity and forests, to heart since retiring here in 2010.
by Mike Lancaster Chainsaw Elegy The frost hangs heavy on the spruce boughs, A cushioning silence stretched between each trunk, Each reaching, needled bow, and every snow-covered limb. Beneath my boots, the frozen ground, shielding roots, Protecting soils, and small creatures from harm during their winter slumber. The saw ignites, a bitter hymn, Its rasping voice against the cold, A blade that sings of loss, care, cost, Of benefit and profit, death, stewardship, and history. Each measured cut, a wound, a gift, Our future is placed in calloused hands. I love conducting chainsaw-based forestry operations in winter. For one thing, it’s cold. Your saw, equipment and gear, and everything that you require for a day can weigh as much as 35 kg (+- 80 lbs.), so colder temperatures are most welcome if you have a good distance to cover on foot. You might feel exhausted by the end of the day but it’s a good exhaustion; both body and mind know that they’ve completed their tasks the right way. It is a feeling that is satisfying in a way that cannot be described, it must be experienced. Another major benefit is that when the ground is frozen and covered by a thick blanket of snow, it is the best time of year to avoid damages to soils, plants, tree roots, and everything that lives amongst them. Conducting forestry by chainsaw has become a diminishing skillset over the decades as hard-working folks and their saws have largely been replaced by big machines that can do the work of more than 10, requiring just 1 to operate them. There are still holdouts, dedicated to their craft, doing forestry in a way that is increasingly seen as outdated, with a dogged, almost romantic, desire to make a living off the forests they love without overly harming them. These are the folks that we need to support, lifting them up as examples of the value-added, reduced-impact forestry that we wish we could see more of across Nova Scotia. What is lost in the drive to maximize efficiency and profits goes beyond ecological consequences to the realm of human experience. It is easier to maintain a connection to the forest when you are touching it with your hands, not through a joystick. When we walk in the forest we hear, smell, and experience it in a way that is not accessible when we are in the enclosed cab of a harvester. Let us not be divided by the rhetoric of the industrial lobbyists that say those who advocate for this vision are “anti-forestry”. Let us support small-scale operations and producers and ecologically-minded initiatives like the Mi’kmaw Forestry Initiative and Medway Community Forests Co-Op. We have lost much of our collective connection to the forests. Let's get it back. Mike Lancaster spends the majority of his time filling his various roles within the nonprofit world; he is the Executive Director of the St. Margaret's Bay Stewardship Association, Coordinator of the Healthy Forest Coalition, Vice Chair of the Medway Community Forest Co-op, and Stewardship Coordinator of the Woodens River Watershed Environmental Organization. He is also the proprietor of a small business that conducts forest and forestry consulting, assessments, and applications.
Mike's work has taken him all across Nova Scotia as he seeks to improve his understanding of the Wabanaki-Acadian forest ecosystem and how to integrate an increased emphasis on conservation, community, and resource stewardship into public policy. Saltwire published this letter on February 2nd. It was written a week earlier. The need to drop divisive political tactics so that Nova Scotians -- and Canadians -- can confront the threats that face us is even more compelling now.
What a remarkable letter Tim Houston just sent his caucus. Remarkable, first, because it bears no resemblance to the platform they ran on two months ago. Healthcare, housing, affordability are so yesterday. Instead we are to pin our province’s health and prosperity on … resource extraction. Wait. Haven’t we been here before, and before, and before? Northern Pulp, anyone? Secondly, panicking in the face of threats is no way to lead the province. Legislated commitments to protect nature and green our grid can’t just be abandoned. The PCs have no mandate to roll back environmental safeguards such as the fracking and uranium bans. The third and perhaps most unsettling aspect of Houston’s letter, is its divisiveness. It invents a category, the 2% – ‘special interests’ — versus the 98% whose ‘bread and butter concerns’ should be listened to. By ‘special interests’ Houston does not seem to be referring to corporations, who have long had the ear of government in this province, but to people who care about our home. Very well, I confess, I have a special interest. I have a special interest in maintaining a livable planet. Nowhere in his lengthy letter does Houston refer to climate change or nature loss. Instead he describes possible reserves of gas and coalbed methane as “opportunities.” Opportunities for more deadly floods, wildfires, droughts and storms. Catastrophes that will empty our coffers faster than we can fill them. Doubling down on the practices that got us into this mess is no solution. To find a way forward we need to say yes to science and Indigenous knowledge. Treating nature as a relation not a resource is the first step in creating an economy that exists within ecological boundaries while also meeting the needs of all Nova Scotians. How best can we care for each other and our home? This is the great challenge. If we tackle it with energy and courage and kindness, with ingenuity and respect for each other, then our province can be a beacon of sanity in a crazy world. Nina Newington Mount Hanley Medway Community Forest Cooperative has several forest parcels listed for approval. They appear on the most recent HPMV (Harvest Plan Map Viewer) map as of mid January 2025. It's good to see a Crown Land licensee provide the kind of info to the public and invite comment, as seen on their website page about the parcels. Here's a screen grab of part of the page. You can read the whole page, see some short videos of and also maps of the parcels on the MCFC website at this link:
https://www.medwaycommunityforest.com/blog/harvest-block-december-2024 by Helga Guderley About 10 years ago, a large area across the inlet from my house was clear cut, despite a massive letter writing campaign, a petition signed by a couple thousand citizens and a strong response from the tourism industry. In response to the public outcry, small changes were made to the cut blocks, including not using the rail trail as a route for removing the wood. Above and below are two photos taken directly after the logging. A much larger area was cut north of the ridge, towards Highway 103. The massive road (along which the logs are piled) is now unusable, as it is cut off from other roads by the access road to exit 5a. Ten years later (Jan 2025), the area has begun to heal, but regrowth is limited: some alders and birches, maple shoots, fir and spruce seedlings. The proximity of older trees downhill from the cut areas may have helped the regeneration, but the high coastal winds have blown down much of the ridge of high trees that was essentially a beauty strip to hide the far larger clear cut further north. DNR scientists say regrowth is very fast in this coastal area. I wouldn’t want to see slower growth. Helga Guderley is a retired professor of Biology, having worked at Université Laval for 30 years. She has served as an adjunct at Dalhousie for 14 years. She is a founding member of the Healthy Forest Coalition, and has taken the health of Nova Scotia's natural environment, in particular its biodiversity and forests, to heart since retiring here in 2010.
CBC RADIO -- ATLANTIC VOICES: This is an episode about protecting private woodlots from becoming clear cut or mismanaged. Interviews with: Dale Prest of "Growing Forests" talking about how, since 2022, they raised 1.1 millions dollars from 100 small private investors to purchase 900 acres of forest which will be used for ecologically managed forestry and carbon offsets for carbon sequestration. The other part of the interview is with woodlot owners who are participating in the Nova Scotia Working Woodlands Trust, ensuring that they woodlot will be preserved as a "forest" into the future. This episode is available as a podcast at this link:
it-s-literally-life-protecting-private-woodlots-audios-mp3_rf_138495195_1.html by Nina Newington “It could take an old field a thousand years to get that pit and mound topography,” said Whitman. “In managed forests you rarely get that, because large trees are cut before they can fall down.” * Preparing to give a talk about Old and Old-Growth Forests at the first SOOF Soup Sunday of the year, I came across that quote. It brought into focus a feeling that has grown stronger the more time I have spent exploring the old forests around Goldsmith Lake: my feet recognize old-growth just as much as my eyes do. Often, in very old forest, instead of walking along, stepping over the odd branch or tree trunk, my feet are either picking a zig zag course between the little ridges or climbing up and down, up and down, up and down, crossing those ridges which aren't so much ridges as elongated mounds. There are not the bouldery forest floors anyone who wanders the woods on the South Mountain is familiar with. There may be rocks around but they are not what form the mounds. Sometimes the mounds are like ripples in the forest floor, running more or less parallel to each other. At other times they are more jumbled. There's a name for this shaping of the forest floor: pit and mound. It is created when trees uproot. We've all seen blown over white spruce, the fan of their roots suddenly at right angles to the ground. Where the roots were, there is now a shallow pit. When those roots rot down, along with whatever soil and stones still cling to them, they form a mound. The roots on an uprooted 60-year-old white spruce don’t form much of a mound. It will erode away quickly. The kind of pit and mound topography that sticks around for 300 to 500 years or more is only created when very large trees are uprooted. What causes large old trees to fall over, tearing their roots free of the soil? Usually very strong winds, sometimes ice storms. Major hurricanes in Nova Scotia’s history have left their mark on the forest floor in this way. When many of those elongated mounds in the forest floor run parallel to each other, this is the signature of a major storm. I'm not good enough at reading the forest floor yet to be able to identify places where pit and mound tells the tale of a particular storm. But I can do some basic math. When I stand in front of a yellow birch that is 80 cm in diameter and about 300 years old, and that yellow birch is growing on top of a mound created when a tree that was, in all probability, at least as big and as old, fell over, I have a pretty good idea that I'm standing somewhere that has been forest continuously for more than 600 years. Even if the tree that formed the mound was a mere 150 years old, well, 450 years later takes us back to 1575. Pre-colonization. Back to a time when the people living here treated the forest and its inhabitants as relations, not resources. The odds are good, then, that this forest floor with its pit and mound has been forest floor for thousands of years. Trees have grown and died, grown and died, many of old age, some perhaps harvested by Indigenous people, others blown over when a major storm struck. The forest lived on, until the settlers arrived and the felling and burning and plowing and felling again began. The pit and mound under my feet tells me that this particular ground was not plowed. There was probably some logging. Fires may have burned here. Storms certainly rampaged through. But even if most of the big trees blew down in a hurricane, as long as no-one came and hauled out all the wood, the ecological continuity of the forest lived on. In the soil, fungi and microbes continued to cooperate and compete, trading information, groceries and medicines, linking tree to tree. It is this continuity my feet feel, entering ancient forest. As magical as it is, when I greet a grandmother yellow birch, to let my eyes travel up and up her trunk, I love to look down too, to where, so often, her toes are showing - the tops of her roots exposed as the mound where she germinated slowly erodes. ***** Nina Newington is a writer, gardener and forest protector. She lives with her wife on the North Mountain in Kespukwitk, District 1 of the seven traditional districts of Mi’kma’ki. She is president of the Save Our Old Forests Association and a member of the Citizen Scientists of Southwest Nova Scotia. In 2024 she spent the better part of 6 months at Lichen Camp, on a logging road in the proposed Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Area, documenting species at risk and identifying old growth forest stands. **Andrew Whitman at the Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences, cited by Joe Rankin in “Old Growth” Forests Defined by Key Ecological Characteristics on Forests for Maine’s Future (Dec 20, 2016)
With thanks to David Patriquin, http://nsforestnotes.ca/2019/02/04/if-an-old-growth-stand-blows-down-is-it-still-old-growth/ Mayflower (Epigaea repens). January 24, 2025 by Helga Guderley In winter, most of our leafy plants have lost their leaves as a protection against the freezing, damage and desiccation that winter conditions bring. But, walking in Nova Scotia's woods in winter shows us many leafy plants that keep their leaves. For some, like Sheep Laurel (Kalmia angustifolium), the leaves look a bit sad, hanging down as if they were thirsty and waiting for rain. But for others like the Mayflower (Epigaea repens), the leaves are beautifully upright, looking ready to go, preparing for spring flower production. Having a physiological bend, I wonder how Mayflower leaves keep so healthy and well over the winter. They do have waxy, leathery leaves, and they are low to the ground, both means of limiting water loss. Do they photosynthesize during warmer periods? For that they need to exchange gases, and therefore risk water loss. A close mycorhyzial interaction is crucial for the plant's health, making it difficult to transplant. One thing is clear -- seeing these Mayflower plants reminds me that spring is soon to come.
* * * * * Helga Guderley is a retired professor of Biology, having worked at Université Laval for 30 years. She has served as an adjunct at Dalhousie for 14 years. She is a founding member of the Healthy Forest Coalition, and has taken the health of Nova Scotia's natural environment, in particular its biodiversity and forests, to heart since retiring here in 2010. |
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