 Good news. The Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Area is now under formal evaluation for permanent protection by Environment and Climate Change, with the Department of Natural Resources collaborating. The Citizen Scientists of Southwest Nova Scotia proposed the area for protection in 2022. Considering that, until recently, the Minister of Natural Resources claimed not to know anything about that proposal, the news that the area is now being treated as a candidate for permanent protection is very good news indeed. The process by which candidate areas are evaluated is led by the Protected Areas Branch of ECC. It includes assessing the ecological, cultural and socio-economic value of the area as well as conducting formal consultations with the public. According to Craig Smith, the director of the Protected Areas Branch, it takes about a year to move an area from newly identified candidate into permanent protection as a designated Wilderness Area. The bad news is that logging of existing approved harvest plans will continue in the area while it is being evaluated. In the two previous rounds of significant land protection conducted by ECC in Nova Scotia, a moratorium was placed on logging, road-building and industrial activities in the areas being assessed for permanent protection. This is normal practice in other parts of the world, for good reason. It makes no sense to actively degrade the conservation value of an area while it is being evaluated for protection.
This letter was undoubtedly crafted by DNR and government communications strategists. It was sent out on April 23rd , mostly in exactly this form but sometimes with other interesting information. One letter to a constituent concerned that logging would harm nesting birds stated, “All operations adhere to federal migratory bird regulations, including seasonal restrictions to avoid nesting periods.” That is welcome news too! It's a relief to see some progress at last, however imperfect. And it is none too soon, given that the government needs to add 60,000 ha to Protected Areas by the end of next year if it is to meet the 15% interim target established by the Nova Scotia-Canada Nature Agreement in 2023. At 3900 ha, the Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Area, if approved, will be one small step in the right direction. Others, including Ingram River and Chain Lakes Wilderness Areas should not be far behind. 
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 As of March 31st 2023, the grand total was 13.2%. At the end of March 2024, the total was 13.6%. At the end of 2024, the grand total so far protected stood at 13.7%. The next report is due in July. Tracked in the annual reports required by EGCCRA, reports titled Urgent Times, Urgent Action, this progress is, to put it mildly, underwhelming. What has gone wrong? As the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society recently recognized, it’s great that Nova Scotia’s commitment to protect 20% by 2030 is in legislation. Good that the legislation requires yearly progress reports. Nice that the province published the Collaborative Protected Areas Strategy. But what’s next? The Strategy lays out criteria for selecting areas to protect. What it doesn’t do is establish the process by which this will happen. This is unfortunate because it is a big commitment:
How are they going to protect this much land?
So where is this list of proposed sites? The list that will take us to 15% by the end of next year is nowhere to be seen. The government’s formal process for assessing, consulting on and then designating sites for permanent protection takes time. Back in 2023, the Canada-Nova Scotia Nature Agreement stated that Nova Scotia needed to protect 82,500 ha to reach the 15% interim target. Having protected a quarter of one percent of our lands and waters since then, that figure is now 62,800 ha. Where is that land going to come from? A tiny trickle of private land has been protected in the last three years as well as some sites that were already in process, but no significant areas of public (Crown) land have yet been identified. Why not? It is perfectly obvious that the province cannot buy enough private land to meet the protection targets. Acquiring private land for conservation takes tremendous dedication and resources. Land donations are lovely and often of great ecological value but they are rarely larger than 100 ha. The bulk of the land for protection must come from ‘provincially administered lands’. According to DNR’s figures, these total 1.854 million ha. With removals for roads etcetera, DNR gives a net provincially administered land base of 1,824,000 ha. Removing the 13.7% that has already been protected, the Crown land base from which new protected areas can be selected totals 1,070,500 ha. (https://novascotia.ca/ecological-forestry/docs/HPF-phase1-report.pdf) Meeting the 20% target is going to require protecting another 346,500 ha. The Department of Natural Resources (DNR) administers all Crown land; the Department of Environment and Climate Change (ECC), through its Protected Areas Branch, administers provincial Protected Areas. Once Crown land is protected, responsibility for it passes from DNR to ECC. The Collaborative Protected Areas Strategy requires those departments to work together. Both Ministers signed the ‘Message from the Ministers’ that introduces the Strategy. It’s all about collaboration, this Strategy. Among the six guiding principles is:
Collaboration – or the lack of it – between the departments and with the public is the major issue. It is what has stalled out a promising start. DNR is known within government and to the public as a black box, exceptional in its refusal to communicate. This lack of transparency was identified in the 2009 Natural Resources Strategy, highlighted in the 2018 Lahey Report, and remains just as problematic in 2025. This does not augur well for a project requiring collaboration. And indeed Freedom of Information requests and the natural diffusion of information suggest that DNR has taken obstructionism to new heights when it comes to working collaboratively to achieve the 15% and 20% goals. Early on, rather than identifying possible sites for protection, DNR staff prioritized identifying areas of Crown land suitable for clearcutting and spraying (‘High Production Forestry’). Simply establishing regular meetings between ECC and DNR to work on protected areas proved challenging. The situation is even worse when it comes to transparency and collaboration with the public. The Collaborative Protected Areas Strategy is specific about collaborating with the Mi’kmaq regarding identifying areas to be protected, engaging in meaningful consultation and creating a Mi’kmaq-Nova Scotia protected areas advisory group. I don’t know whether or not that advisory group has been established and is active. Certainly, it is good to see respect for Treaty Rights incorporated in the Strategy. The Strategy also acknowledged the general public’s desire to participate in identifying areas that should be protected but it created no mechanism for us to do so. No advisory committee was established, nor any formal process by which the public could nominate areas for protection. Many Nova Scotians are passionate and knowledgeable about the public lands in their areas, with a deep familiarity developed by hiking, hunting, fishing, paddling, camping, foraging, bird-watching. The list goes on. For many in rural Nova Scotia this knowledge has come down through five or six generations. It is complementary to the information about areas of high conservation value that the Protected Areas Branch of the Department of Environment and Climate Change has assembled. It is also corrective to the famously inaccurate forest inventory data managed by DNR. Besides the principle of the thing – a Collaborative Protected Areas Strategy should be exactly that – there is another very good reason to involve the public in meeting the goals of protecting 15% by 2026 and 20% by 2030: it is not going to happen without our help. Progress, as I said before, has been underwhelming. Not only has DNR failed to work with ECC, it is working with the forestry industry to degrade the conservation value of areas that should be at the top of the list of sites identified for possible protection. What am I talking about? The public, having clearly articulated our desire for urgent action, a collaborative approach, and a transparent process, has got on with the job of identifying multiple Crown land sites for protection. Groups in different parts of the province have submitted proposals for areas that meet the Collaborative Protected Areas Strategy’s criteria, documenting areas rich in biodiversity as well as rare or unique landscapes including species at risk habitat and old-growth forests. How has DNR responded? By rushing through harvest plans to log in areas citizens have proposed for protection. Specific examples known to me where this is happening are the Chain Lakes Wilderness Area in Kings County; Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Area in Annapolis County; Ingram River Wilderness Area in Halifax County. Far from working collaboratively with ECC and the public to protect the best of what is left of our forests, DNR is working hard to allow the forestry industry to cut what it can while it can. The effect is to fragment the few remaining areas with continuous mature forest cover. Our last intact primary forests are at stake.  New harvest plan within proposed Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Area, put up for comment on HPMV November 2024, two years after citizen scientists proposed the area for protection. Red areas all recognized old-growth forest; stand with orange outline should be assessed as old-growth.  Old sugar maple stand approved for harvest in proposed Chain Lakes Wilderness Area. Although this government, in its second term, favours increased resource extraction, the Minister for Environment and Climate Change has reaffirmed the government’s commitment to meeting the 15% and 20% targets.
It is very poor governance indeed to allow one department – Natural Resources – to work at cross-purposes to another department when they have been mandated to achieve a common goal. It is also unwise to engage Nova Scotians in a collaboration they really care about – protecting our lands and waters – then trample on their efforts. Citizen scientists across the province are doing the work to identify sites to protect. It is past time for government to work with us to achieve what is supposed to be a common goal. Nina Newington Save Our Old Forests Note: This piece appeared in the Chronicle-Herald "Opinions" on March 21, 2025.
Since January 21, when Premier Houston wrote to the members of the Progressive Conservative caucus laying out his plans for energizing Nova Scotia’s economy, political discourse in this Province has been consumed by concerns for our democracy. Last week the Public Bills Committee heard from ordinary citizens. Anger dominated. Most felt that fundamental safeguards were under threat from a government that had gone well beyond the mandate it won in the last election. That mandate recognized the Houston government’s attempts to fulfill its promise to reform health care. It did not authorize turning our democracy on its head. Earlier the government had withdrawn legislation that would have given it authority to dismiss the Auditor-General, and many speakers hoped to persuade it to abandon other proposals that would undercut freedom of speech and numerous democratic protections. The great Parliamentary battles of the nineteenth century, some of which were fought out in our own Legislature, established that the government of the day is chosen from whichever group of legislators can consistently win the support of a majority of members of the House. The Houston government’s ‘super majority’ will ensure that votes of confidence will be sufficient to keep it in power. Of course, it is possible that enough members of the Conservative majority will be so appalled by the anti-democratic over-reach of the Government’s plans that they will switch sides and vote with the Opposition. That is not likely because governments secure members’ support through patronage. The promise of a provincial government office building, or a sports facility, or grants for economic development or roads in the constituency or perhaps some kind of advancement for an individual member can all hold members on side. A caucus rebellion, in other words, is extremely unlikely. Nevertheless Conservative MLAs must be extremely uncomfortable with the measures that their government has forced them to endorse. They must be searching for ways in which to persuade their leaders to back away from this platform. After all, if the anger expressed at the Public Bills Committee represents feeling within the public at large, this government is very likely to lose badly at the next election and the party itself will bear the burden of complicity for many elections to come. There are steps that caucus members can take to persuade the government to retreat. The British parliament in recent years has resorted to several that Canadian legislatures have not really explored. British MPs often abstain when votes are called. Party officials note the number of abstentions at each vote; when they become too many, leaders may be open to compromise. Occasionally MPs may actually vote against the government. If the issue is significant the government may be willing to compromise. At times the position of the leader may be questioned and can lead to his or her replacement. Essentially each of these steps can amount to a caucus revolt. We don’t hear of caucus revolts very often in Canada. Perhaps most Canadian MPs or MLA are too easily cowed, or bought off, by their leaders. Perhaps our senior politicians are too canny to ask too much of their followers, so they frame their policies accordingly. The current situation in the Nova Scotia legislature suggests that Premier Houston has gone well beyond the reasonable expectations of his caucus, his party and, if the recent hearings are any guide, the voting public. Let us hope that Conservative MLAs will take seriously the presentations made at the Public Bills Committee. Paul Pross Professor Emeritus in Public Administration and a former Director of the School of Public Administration, Dalhousie University GOOD READ:: There's a very good article about Nova Scotia maple syrup producers up on Atlas Obscura. What is of particular interest is the discussion about the impacts of climate change -- that it is changing the length of the "season" for syrup production. Also, that Nova Scotia forests are experiencing more severely damaging storms as the strength of the tail ends of hurricanes are being sustained by the increasing ocean temperatures in their path. Many of Nova Scotia's sugar maple forests have taken a real beating from the past few storms. Worth a read. LINK: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/nova-scotia-maple-syrup  To the Public Bills Committee regarding Bill No. 1 – An Act Respecting Government Organization and Administration.
The breadth and depth of the attack on democratic oversight of government contained in this bill is shocking. Fortunately, many of us have been sensitized by the authoritarian ambitions of the US president. Preserving democracy requires an active citizenry— people with a special interest in government transparency and accountability. While I am grateful that the government has dropped its attempt to undermine the power of the Auditor General, I would like to see a similar roll back of their attempt to reduce the power and independence of the Privacy and Information Commissioner. Robust access to information regarding the activities of government through Freedom of Information requests is always going to feel inconvenient to the government in power. The PCs are not the only party to have campaigned on promises to strengthen FOIPOP access then forgotten those promises once in power. But Bill 1 goes further than merely failing to improve access to information, it attempts to give the heads of government departments decision making power over which requests will be dismissed as ‘trivial’ or ‘vexatious.’ As someone who has made use of FOIPOPs to get information about activities within the particularly opaque Department of Natural Resources, I can say with certainty that our Access to Information provisions should be strengthened not weakened. I expect DNR does find it vexatious that members of the public and journalists can find out about harvest plans that are being approved without having been put up for public comment, but that is exactly why decisions regarding FOIPOP requests must be made by an independent commissioner. I am also strongly opposed to the provision in this bill that would extend political control over the provincial civil service. We need civil servants who are doing their jobs on behalf of the public without fear that they can be fired without cause. Granting the governing party the power to fire non-unionized civil servants without cause is to erode fundamental rights for those workers, exposing them to arbitrary and capricious decision-making. This is not a way to improve efficiency, it is a way to create an anxious, compliant public service. Your government’s embrace of aggressive partisan rhetoric, as represented by repeated efforts to dismiss a part of the electorate as ‘special interests’, is on display too in the decision to disband Communications Nova Scotia. Though not always a fan of their efforts, the commitment to creating non-partisan public information is important. I have been surprised and pleased in the past by the quality of the information and the tone in public information documents such as those covering the Collaborative Protected Areas Strategy and Phases One and Two of High Production Forestry. I fear that disbanding Communications Nova Scotia indicates the abandonment of any commitment to non-partisan communications in favour of more controlled political messaging. In sum, Bill 1 represents such fundamental overreach and is so lacking in redeeming qualities that I request it be withdrawn in its entirety. Sincerely, Nina Newington Mount Hanley by Nina Newington  In mid-January I posted More on Nova Scotia DNR’s Zombie Forest Harvest Plans on Nova Scotia Forest Matters. The piece ends:
Now Houston’s government is trying to limit the public’s ability to use Freedom of Information requests (FOIPOPs) to find out what the government is up to. If passed, Bill 1 would allow government department to refuse requests they find ‘trivial, frivolous and vexatious’, ‘too broad’ or likely ‘to impede operations.’ Would that be operations like logging old to old-growth forest within the proposed Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Area? The peninsula between Corbett and Dalhousie Lakes, for example. It is clear that DNR, after a brief and welcome turn towards greater transparency in 2022-2023, has retreated into its black box. They have not replied to a December 19, 2024 email requesting information about these harvest plans. No logging has taken place so far. In the absence of any response, a new FOIPOP should reveal whether plans have changed in light of public attention and the identification of 8 Species at risk lichens in the zombie cutblocks.
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.   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. |
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