Report: Nova Scotia’s forests still in trouble

HALIFAX, Nova Scotia – Measures intended to save the severely degraded forests in Nova Scotia are too little, too late, a new report says.

The Halifax-based research group GPI Atlantic, in a report released last week, says more needs to be done to counteract decades of overharvesting, clear-cutting and other industrial forestry practices.

“As a result, the average age of Nova Scotia’s forests has never been younger,” says a release from the institute. “In the 1970s, only 4 percent of the province’s forests were under 20 years of age, compared to 16 percent in the 1990s and 24 percent today.”

GPI says there has been some improvement in forestry practices, but it’s a “far cry” from what’s needed to deal with a massive increase in logging and clear-cutting over the last 25 years.

“The current reliance on pulp and paper production is unsustainable, from an economic perspective and an environmental perspective,” said Ron Colman, director of the think tank.

The Canadian findings are of interest in Maine, a heavily forested state where sustainability also has been a concern. The Legislature has responded with laws such as one governing liquidation harvesting. Also having an impact is forest certification, a market-driven approach that rewards environmentally and ecologically responsible practices.

The group that evaluated Nova Scotia’s forests says there has been a marginal increase in “selective harvesting” since its 2001 report, from 0.9 percent to 1.5 percent of total production. Selective harvesting involves logging only mature trees while leaving the younger ones still standing.

As well, the report notes there has been a small drop in clear-cutting, and more land has been placed under protection.

The report says Nova Scotians have virtually no chance of ever seeing the towering trees of the Acadian forests that once covered the province, providing masts for a thriving wooden shipbuilding industry.

“Our mostly young, single-species, single-aged tree plantations today bear no resemblance to the magnificent and diverse” forests of the past, says the report.

The group makes eight main recommendations to begin restoring and protecting the value of Nova Scotia’s forest wealth.

They include more incentives to woodlot owners to improve forest management, a sharp reduction in clear-cutting and development of a value-added forest strategy.

Report author Linda Pannozzo notes that in Manitoba the average value derived from a cubic meter of harvested trees is $425, while in Nova Scotia the same amount of wood produces only $107.

In 2007, only 13 percent of all wood exports from Nova Scotia were value-added products, such as furniture, compared with 28 percent in New Brunswick, 57 percent in Ontario and 75 percent in Manitoba.

In 1999, the Natural Resources Department decided to set aside 8 percent of Crown land in 38 districts of the province. However, “the province is still far from those targets,” writes Pannozzo.

Meanwhile, the pulp and paper industry in the province has struggled in recent years, despite the continuation of clear-cutting practices.

For example, the owners of the NewPage operation in Port Hawkesbury published warnings in a recent prospectus that the rising Canadian currency had “impaired the ability of the Port Hawkesbury mill to compete profitably in the United States market.”

In Liverpool, the AbitibiBowater mill was spared by its parent company in a November 2007 round of closures and cuts, and a recent agreement allowing it to generate its own power appears to have given it added security.

However, Premier Rodney MacDonald has noted the mill faces challenging times in the years to come.

Colman argues the pulp and paper industry has long exhibited signs that it is a dying industry, and that other industries would be more profitable in the long term.

“If you rely on pulp and paper alone, you’re moving into a world where you lose more and more of your high-quality timber. … You close off your options to move into other kinds of production.”