Atlantic Forestry November 2021

Bringing Lahey to the woodlot sector

Bill Lahey’s review of forestry in Nova Scotia, completed more than three years ago, laid out a pretty clear vision for a more ecologically sound and sustainable approach to managing our woodlands. It was endorsed by provincial politicians of all stripes, and it has received broad support from the industry. Lahey’s advice to the government was to implement this new approach on public land – essentially to lead by example, rather than attempt to legislate practices on private land. Although some had hoped that the changes would occur more quickly, it appears that the wheels are turning, and that Crown forest management is making the transition. (As this process continues, many citizens will be monitoring the timelines, and reading the fine print.) 

As for private land, the majority of woodlot owners in the province are fully on board with ecological forestry. Some have been practising variations on this approach for decades, and they are keen to refine their practices – to ensure that what they are doing is not just philosophically ecological, but scientifically ecological. Others want to do it, but they lack the knowledge, the confidence, or the necessary technical and operational support. So it is good news that a major pilot project is being rolled out to test a range of ecological harvest treatments on this land base, under real-world conditions – including treatments aimed at restoring stands degraded by past practices. 

This initiative is happening under the auspices of the Family Forest Network, which recently received a five-year allocation of $9.8 million from the Forestry Innovation Transition Trust. (The FITT, a $50-million fund established by the McNeil government last year in the wake of the Northern Pulp closure, has thus far approved nine projects for a total of $22.8 million, and it was accepting another round of applications this fall from Oct. 15 to Nov. 15.)

The Family Forest Network is a collaborative effort involving 11 non-governmental organizations that provide services for woodlot owners in the province, but the lead player has been the Nova Scotia Woodlot Owners and Operators Association (NSWOOA). Based on a resolution passed at its 50th annual meeting in May 2019, this group got the ball rolling before there was any guarantee of government support. A big part of that effort was building the broad partnership that gives the initiative its considerable capacity and credibility. 

The other groups involved are the Federation of Nova Scotia Woodland Owners, the Nova Scotia Landowners and Forest Fibre Producers Association, the Nova Scotia Community College (NSCC), the Confederacy of Mainland Mi’kmaq, North Nova Forest Owners Co-op, Athol Forestry Cooperative, the Western Woodlot Services Co-op, the Mersey Tobeatic Research Institute (MTRI), the Medway Community Forest Cooperative, and Community Forests International. Together, these organizations have an extensive reach, estimated at 12,590 woodland owners.

“There was a major organizing effort for small woodlot owners in the late 1960s, supported by the Coady Institute, and this is certainly the most widespread, diverse group since then to undertake this kind of project,” says Andy Kekacs, executive director of the NSWOOA. “I would argue this ranks beyond that, because I believe these groups represent more landowners in more places, and with a broader perspective, and with greater services, than probably has ever been undertaken in Nova Scotia. This is a really significant effort. The fact that these groups, 10 years ago, were quite competitive and not working together well, and were trying to hang on, in a market that was not favourable to long-term management of small private lands – the fact that we’re all now working together is really important. It shouldn’t be underestimated. And we’ve brought in expertise not only in harvesting, with the co-op members, but in biodiversity and species-at-risk through MTRI, in carbon through Community Forests International, in the creation of a working woodlands trust through the Medway Community Forest, tied into the NSCC’s training and retraining program and giving those folks some internship in the field.” 

The pilot will involve working with landowners and contractors who step up to participate. Some 200 treatments will be conducted, with detailed pre- and post-harvest assessments of site conditions, annual monitoring, and modelling of expected future growth.

“What we’ll probably do is come up with a list of 20 or 30 treatment types that we can replicate a number of times in different areas and different stand conditions,” Kekacs says. “Ideally, we would like to have it as a rigorous academic research project, with some grad students and the publication of one or more papers in reviewed journals. I mean, the science is well established about ecological forestry, but it’s not well established within the context of Nova Scotia, and there may be some reasons that things are different here – the proximity to the ocean, high winds and so forth, maybe some shallower soils, maybe some less-fertile soils than other places.”

The funding for this project probably will not flow until sometime in early 2022. In the meantime, Kekacs says anyone who wants to learn more about the Family Forest Network should follow the link at nswoods.ca. “It’ll be a while before we reach out to landowners, so this way they can stay connected. We would hate to lose people who are interested now.”

He has already had about 150 inquiries, so he doesn’t think there’s going to be any problem getting enough participants. He says many woodlot owners essentially dropped out of the industry in the first decade of the 21st century because the industry didn’t align with their values. “People were concerned about clearcutting and other things, so rather than harvest, they were not harvesting, and that has really profound negative consequences for the sector as a whole.” He believes that demonstrating the viability of ecological forestry is the way to bring those people back.

“That gets to the heart of what the responsibility for the government may be, or what the role for the government may be, in ensuring that the wood market remains competitive and functioning as markets should function,” he says. “There are few buyers, and there’s a problem with information being available to all participants – all sellers. So it’s a classic economic case for government to help a market to function more effectively as markets should, where supply-and-demand actually works.”

Kekacs says reaching out to contractors is also a key part of the project. “They want to know ‘Why should I even consider this? Can anybody make money at this? And what the heck do I do with the gear that I have?’ So having a wide variety of treatments all over the place, on different holdings, also creates sort of a playbook that somebody who’s a contractor can look at and make a more informed decision about what is financially in their best interest. We have to address the contractor issue, or we’re never going to get anywhere.”

A major report will be produced at the five-year mark – but since that is a short timeframe in the life of a forest, the network aims to continue this work further into the future, and potentially expand its scope. “The long-term goal, for a number of years now, has been to create the conditions to demonstrate why a focus on family forest stewardship, in a place like the Maritimes where there’s so much privately owned land, would make us a very good candidate for some federal funding for forest stewardship – sort of a regional or national centre,” says Kekacs. “We very much hope to convince our local federal legislators, and ultimately the government, that this would be a wise thing. Issues like climate change and endangered species and all sorts of other stuff, in Eastern Canada, because the small private land ownership is so large, we have a disproportionate capacity to make a difference on those issues.”

He sees the Family Forest Network as a durable entity that will prove its worth, but figuring out its long-term governance structure is still on the to-do list. “It could be a for-profit entity, it could be a for-profit co-op, a non-profit co-op, a charity, and so on. We’ll be looking at how to best do that, in the next 18 months.”

One thing it definitely will not be is an advocacy group. “We don’t want anything to do with politics,” Kekacs says. “We simply want to support the rollout of the Lahey recommendations on small private lands. To the extent that that’s political, we can’t help that, but that’s not the point of the network.”

This is a good time to be a woodlot owner in Nova Scotia – or at least, better than other times in recent memory. We sometimes hear people fret, “It’s all so confusing, with so many different groups!” But it’s actually not that hard. The groups do different things, and now they are working together to accomplish something larger. It’s a bit more complicated than those long-ago days when a government extension forester would meet you at the gate and tell you what to do on your land – and that’s a good thing. DL