Since its inception, the Healthy Forest Coalition has strongly opposed the use of clearcutting in forest management. Each of the issues highlighted in these briefing notes are inextricably linked to the damage of clearcutting, as well as to climate change and the need for immediate implementation of the Lahey report.

These briefing notes have been prepared to provide politicians, industry and all Nova Scotians a succinct description of the issues within our current forestry system. Environment issues will be front and centre of the current Legislature and with these briefing notes, MLAs should be well equipped to take action.

​We have circulated the memos to our supporters, through Forest Alerts, and encouraged them to take up these issues with their MLAs and/or in the local media. To learn how to contact your MLA, click here.

Briefing Notes

The Healthy Forest Coalition has sent this letter (linked on left) to Nova Scotia's Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs). The letter, and briefing notes to follow, are intended to aid MLAs in their discussion on forestry and land management in the upcoming session of the Legislature. To see all the maps in more detail, click here.
​In Nova Scotia, clearcutting has been a leading cause of habitat and biodiversity loss. A remedy lies in reducing clearcutting. We must address the issue of how to bring that reduction about.
Healthy insect populations are essential to the biodiversity and commercial value of Nova Scotia forests, but are being seriously impacted by on-going inappropriate forestry operations.
Are Silent springs becoming silent years? Industrial forestry operations cause drastic changes to forest structure, forest composition, and the bird communities that depend on forest habitat.
For some 50 years forest companies logged our woodlands as if there were no tomorrow, but tomorrow has come.  Do we allow industry to clearcut the last of the forest available to it? If we are to have ecological forestry, we must have an ecologically appropriate industry.
Once in the atmosphere, CO2 takes centuries to be absorbed by biological and geological processes. Forestry operations must ensure that the forest continues to capture carbon, making sustainable harvesting essential. Clear cutting should be avoided like the plague!
 The truth is that it is past time for the forestry industry and Department of Natural Resources and Renewables to tell the truth.
Nova Scotia provincial Crown Lands belong to all citizens of Nova Scotia. Currently they are being managed primarily for the forestry industry. ​The time has arrived to manage these lands for the benefit for all Nova Scotians.
Maintaining Nova Scotia’s forests would reduce our carbon footprint much more effectively than the substitution of biomass for natural gas or coal for power generation.  
Forests are our best natural means of capturing carbon to avert global warming.  Private woodlot owners should receive financial incentives for maintaining healthy forests on their lands.
The documents above are presented thematically to provide the reader an introduction to the issue, the damages caused by industrial forestry, and highlight ways of transitioning to ecological forestry. 

Archived Briefing Notes

In the links above we present the memos in the order in which they were sent. We do this for the record and also to help our supporters and others to track these issues as they develop and work their way through public debate.