HFC MAPS REVEAL DRAMATIC CHANGES IN NOVA SCOTIA FORESTS
DISAPPEARANCE OF ACADIAN FOREST AND OLDER STANDS DUE TO CLEARCUTTING
In 2021, the Healthy Forest Coalition (HFC) released four new maps that document the changes brought about in our forests since highly mechanized clearcutting came into wide use in the 1980s.
The maps, prepared by HFC member Shanni Bale using the Department of Lands and Forestry’s own data, show how widespread clearcuts – or in Department of Lands and Forestry terms ‘even-aged management treatments’ - and plantations have become since 1985. From 1985 to 1995 cutting was widespread, generally on private lands, but not yet intense. Over the next 20 years intensity greatly increased on Crown and private land. Plantations, chiefly of softwoods, (dark brown), became prominent. The map for 2020 shows how little is left of the forest that existed in 1985.
Our forested land base comprises 3,766,003 hectares of Crown and private land. Some 2,048,004 hectares are available to the forest industry. The remainder is either only nominally forest (such as bogland), inaccessible or allocated to other uses. So two million hectares is what the industry must work with, now and in the future. However, the available forest cannot be assigned exclusively to industry. There are competing interests, such as protection of rare and endangered species, tourism, recreation, the revival of biodiversity, and the maintenance of traditional Mi’kmaq connections with the forest.
Between 1997 and 2018 the forest industry, equipped with modern harvesters often working 24-hour shifts, removed 109,557,000 cubic metres of wood from 964,662 hectares. Nearly half of the available forest land. That is unsustainable. It is unsustainable for the industry, because if harvesting were to continue at that rate – nearly 46,000 ha. per year – the rotation in that forest would be only slightly more than 44 years. Our forest industry would be doomed to maintain for a very long time its present focus on short rotation harvesting for small dimension lumber and wood chips, a prospect that could well mean closure for many sawmills. In other words, modern clearcutting brought short term wealth to a few enterprises, but the long term costs, to the industry alone, are monumental.
That rate of cutting is also unsustainable for every other use, human, animal or biological. Clearcutting/ even-aged management devastates animal habitat and forces radical population changes, particularly for rare and endangered species. It interrupts natural regeneration of plant life, inhibiting new growth and forcing the cycle of forest development to revert to weaker pioneer species. By removing the forest canopy, it exposes the forest floor to sun and heat and so to alternating episodes of drought and flooding, turning what was once an insulating blanket sequestering carbon into a carbon emitter and contributing further to the existential threat of global warming.
Though the costs of clearcutting have been high, they may become much higher. This is because older, intact forests are our best means of mitigating climate change. Unless we retain the forests we have left, that existential threat will be even more devastating.
So for the sake of all life, we in the Healthy Forest Coalition believe that we must address the clearcut/ even-aged management problem. We can do that by urging government to implement the Lahey report’s recommendation to adopt ecological forestry. Starting by introducing badly needed amendments to the Crown Lands and Forest acts and proceeding by converting to selection forestry. These steps will require transitional support to industry, particularly to the forestry and logging labour force, but also, through tax incentives and disincentives to those who have invested in capital intensive equipment. We can do it as well through restoring our woodlands and finding new ways for us to relate to and work with the forest.
Contact: Contact: Mike Lancaster: e-mail [email protected]; phone: 902-441-7672
Map sources: N.S. Parks and Parks and Protected Area System (2020); Forest Inventory Data Base (Cycles 1-3, 1985, 1988, 1988-1990, 192-1995 , 1997-2014, 2017), Crown harvest plans 2016-2020. For further details, including maps for 1985-2005 and 1985-2015 and a discussion of the methodology used to compile the maps, contact Shanni Bale at [email protected].
Forest statistics compiled from : https://cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/statsprofile/economicimpact/ns and Department of Natural Resources, Provincial Timber Objectives, February 2016, Slide #7.
Other information: Paul Pross, [email protected]; phone: 902-766-4667
The Healthy Forest Coalition is open to all Nova Scotians without preference or discrimination of any kind; members live in rural and urban Nova Scotia. The Coalition supports a forestry industry in Nova Scotia that operates in accordance with Treaty rights and ecological forestry principles, and which is regulated accordingly.
DISAPPEARANCE OF ACADIAN FOREST AND OLDER STANDS DUE TO CLEARCUTTING
In 2021, the Healthy Forest Coalition (HFC) released four new maps that document the changes brought about in our forests since highly mechanized clearcutting came into wide use in the 1980s.
The maps, prepared by HFC member Shanni Bale using the Department of Lands and Forestry’s own data, show how widespread clearcuts – or in Department of Lands and Forestry terms ‘even-aged management treatments’ - and plantations have become since 1985. From 1985 to 1995 cutting was widespread, generally on private lands, but not yet intense. Over the next 20 years intensity greatly increased on Crown and private land. Plantations, chiefly of softwoods, (dark brown), became prominent. The map for 2020 shows how little is left of the forest that existed in 1985.
Our forested land base comprises 3,766,003 hectares of Crown and private land. Some 2,048,004 hectares are available to the forest industry. The remainder is either only nominally forest (such as bogland), inaccessible or allocated to other uses. So two million hectares is what the industry must work with, now and in the future. However, the available forest cannot be assigned exclusively to industry. There are competing interests, such as protection of rare and endangered species, tourism, recreation, the revival of biodiversity, and the maintenance of traditional Mi’kmaq connections with the forest.
Between 1997 and 2018 the forest industry, equipped with modern harvesters often working 24-hour shifts, removed 109,557,000 cubic metres of wood from 964,662 hectares. Nearly half of the available forest land. That is unsustainable. It is unsustainable for the industry, because if harvesting were to continue at that rate – nearly 46,000 ha. per year – the rotation in that forest would be only slightly more than 44 years. Our forest industry would be doomed to maintain for a very long time its present focus on short rotation harvesting for small dimension lumber and wood chips, a prospect that could well mean closure for many sawmills. In other words, modern clearcutting brought short term wealth to a few enterprises, but the long term costs, to the industry alone, are monumental.
That rate of cutting is also unsustainable for every other use, human, animal or biological. Clearcutting/ even-aged management devastates animal habitat and forces radical population changes, particularly for rare and endangered species. It interrupts natural regeneration of plant life, inhibiting new growth and forcing the cycle of forest development to revert to weaker pioneer species. By removing the forest canopy, it exposes the forest floor to sun and heat and so to alternating episodes of drought and flooding, turning what was once an insulating blanket sequestering carbon into a carbon emitter and contributing further to the existential threat of global warming.
Though the costs of clearcutting have been high, they may become much higher. This is because older, intact forests are our best means of mitigating climate change. Unless we retain the forests we have left, that existential threat will be even more devastating.
So for the sake of all life, we in the Healthy Forest Coalition believe that we must address the clearcut/ even-aged management problem. We can do that by urging government to implement the Lahey report’s recommendation to adopt ecological forestry. Starting by introducing badly needed amendments to the Crown Lands and Forest acts and proceeding by converting to selection forestry. These steps will require transitional support to industry, particularly to the forestry and logging labour force, but also, through tax incentives and disincentives to those who have invested in capital intensive equipment. We can do it as well through restoring our woodlands and finding new ways for us to relate to and work with the forest.
Contact: Contact: Mike Lancaster: e-mail [email protected]; phone: 902-441-7672
Map sources: N.S. Parks and Parks and Protected Area System (2020); Forest Inventory Data Base (Cycles 1-3, 1985, 1988, 1988-1990, 192-1995 , 1997-2014, 2017), Crown harvest plans 2016-2020. For further details, including maps for 1985-2005 and 1985-2015 and a discussion of the methodology used to compile the maps, contact Shanni Bale at [email protected].
Forest statistics compiled from : https://cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/statsprofile/economicimpact/ns and Department of Natural Resources, Provincial Timber Objectives, February 2016, Slide #7.
Other information: Paul Pross, [email protected]; phone: 902-766-4667
The Healthy Forest Coalition is open to all Nova Scotians without preference or discrimination of any kind; members live in rural and urban Nova Scotia. The Coalition supports a forestry industry in Nova Scotia that operates in accordance with Treaty rights and ecological forestry principles, and which is regulated accordingly.
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