BRIGHTON: Province cuts forest industry slack on clearcutting
By 2016, great swaths of Nova Scotia’s interior landscape will still resemble a buzz cut — with just a bit more growth left on top.
After promising in 2010 to slash the rate of forest clearcutting to half the total harvest within five years, the provincial government has at last determined what will not constitute a clearcut: all the mature trees may be removed, so long as a partial cover of chest-high shrubs and saplings remains.
Land will only be deemed to have been clearcut if less than 60 per cent is covered with spaced “trees” at least 1.3 metres tall.
This lenient definition of what is not a clearcut will permit substantial clearing of land alongside the more controversial method of wholesale harvesting.
Government may yet meet its target on paper with this approach, but it will be a far cry from what most people envisioned when government pledged to crack down on clearcutting.
Forward-thinking foresters and environmental critics hoped clearcutting, which accounts for the majority of harvesting now, would be balanced by more conservative measures of uneven-aged management, where a continuous forest cover is left intact and a selection of trees is harvested within that canopy.
Even so, leaving behind a partial cover of saplings and shrubs will give new stands a head start and leave habitat for wildlife. This should save some silviculture costs later on and may mix up the age and species of what would otherwise become single-aged softwood plantations.
But, clearly, the rules released this week are meant to cut some slack for the forest industry at a difficult time and satisfy Pacific West Commercial Corp. as it prepares to buy the Point Tupper paper mill.
The supply of softwood has been tight, prices have been low, markets have been drying up, and sawmills and contractors have been going bust.
One paper mill has closed, another has been idled and will scale back if it reopens, and the remaining pulp and paper mill in Pictou County has been capitalizing on the downturn by buying up cheap wood and bidding on the assets of the defunct Ligni Bel Ltd. sawmill in Scotsburn.
Government has reasonably tried to avert a worse crisis by not squeezing the fibre supply too hard and driving harvesting costs too high at this time.
The inevitable costs that will come with even modest restrictions on clearcutting, however, will most certainly fall on taxpayers, contractors or sawmills using Crown timber, and not on Pacific West.
Throughout the yearlong sale process, it has insisted on buying the money-losing mill only if it can duck its share of fixed power costs and any costs associated with provincial renewable-energy rules.
Decisions on power rates and Crown timber rights for the mill operation are expected Monday.
Presumably, Pacific West has played hardball with the province also, seeking to pay less than its predecessor for our forest resources and shirking its fair share of costs as the province inches toward more sustainable harvesting methods.
Rachel Brighton, a freelance journalist and former magazine publisher, writes on industry, ethics, economics and the environment.
Do our children count for anything?
Submitted by Me Too on August 19, 2012 - 8:22am.
It is said a picture is worth 10,000 words. The picture of these young students hiking through a clearcut presents a stark image of the blighted, desolate future they are moving toward. The policy choices we make today will determine the range of options future generations have. Choices based on political expediency just transfer today’s pain onto future generations – not a very mature way to behave. With all of the citizen input that was provided to government policy makers, is this the best they could come up with? A tragedy in the making.
So disappointing and confusing
Submitted by Dak on August 19, 2012 - 8:48am.
The things this NDP government are doing are so confusing and disappointing. I shudder to think of what our forests will look like in 20 years, but I guess that pales in comparison to getting re-elected in Port Hawkesbury.
Why am I not surprised.
Submitted by ClayPick on August 19, 2012 - 8:58am.
Why am I not surprised.
Slow motion clear cutting
Submitted by pitstop on August 19, 2012 - 8:57am.
On the surface, 60 per cent of the lot to be left covered with spaced “trees or scrub” at least 1.3 metres tall is a tough order to pull off with todays' large footprint clear cutting equipment.
What prevents the woodsmen from just increasing the size of the "lot" on paper and just clear cutting the 39% they really want in the first place or just coming back in a couple of years to finish the clear cut? Clear cuts can quickly produce 1.3m scrub cover if the stumps are left in.
More lunacy from a pencil
Submitted by allisone on August 19, 2012 - 9:14am.
More lunacy from a pencil pusher who's never sat in the seat of a mechanical tree harvester. You want to save the forests simply stop exporting our best logs to other countries and start exporting finished wood products only.Stop subsidizing greedy unions and let Companies fail,If there is a market the strong companies will survive.
It's Called Renewable
Submitted by daveburris on August 19, 2012 - 10:19am.
Shucks, the trees are growing again in a couple of months, by next year, the saplings are six feet high, and the forestry companies are replanting. Irving has planted about 1 billion trees since 1957.
Idiocy
Submitted by bobindartmouth on August 19, 2012 - 10:07am.
It seems the spineless government in NS can be talked into just about anything by industry. No vision, no plan and no idea how to see the big picture for themselves and their children. Gross.
I don't get it...
Submitted by Menachem Began on August 19, 2012 - 10:35am.
Let's make it crystal clear: Why can't they leave one (ONE!) healthy and mature tree on each acre of land? It's not as if they couldn't steer their equipment around one solitary tree. The fact that they take every single last tree is clear proof that they're motivated by pure, unadulterated, pig-headed greed.
The rule should be that 25% of the ground area (on a hectare grid basis) must remain untouched. This type of rule should ensure that the ecosystem can survive and more quickly regenerate.
Unfair
Submitted by T-Diddy on August 19, 2012 - 10:30am.
This is a completely unfair characterization of the new clear cut policy, which is probably the first of its kind in our country. Clearly the author did not read past the new release to read the actual nitty gritty of the policy, and I encourage all who are concerned to do so to get a true picture of the policy. I would have actually like to see the response of some of the "forward thinking foresters and environmental critics" to see what they actually think instead of putting words in there mouths.
These are not "modest" restrictions on clearcutting, companies will have to work very hard to try to meet these targets and re think many of the ways they treat stands. Its easy to say that the whole province should be managed as an uneven aged forest, but on the ground the conditions are just not there to do that. This policy however will help to promote that.
This new policy is not perfect, and made need some tinkering down the road, but it is an important step in right direction, and as a forestry professional, I think the government has done a fairly good job of balancing interests and should be applauded for taking an important step.
For the record, I don't think that picture is of a "decimated Acadian forest", its looks to be former reverted pasture land.