Atlantic Forestry May 2020

Uncertain times

The Western Nova Scotia Woodland Conference was held March 7, when people were still half-jokingly greeting each other with toe kicks and elbow bumps. Had it been scheduled for a few weeks later, packing that crowd into the North Queens firehall would have been unthinkable. The Central and Eastern editions of this annual conference series were slated for April, so they had to be cancelled. A number of other highly anticipated forestry-related events also bit the dust due to COVID-19. The Atlantic Heavy Equipment Show, which was supposed to run April 2-3 in Moncton, will be rescheduled at some point. The Canadian Woodlands Forum (CWF) spring meeting had been booked to coincide with the biennial show, but that one has gone by the wayside. 

CWF also postponed DEMO International, the epic outdoor forestry show that was supposed to run Sept. 24-26 in Venosta, Quebec (in the Gatineau Valley). This must have been a tough decision, because DEMO is only held every four years, and a tremendous amount of work had gone into planning this 14th edition. A 2021 date is now under consideration. In the meantime, CWF has also deferred its summer teachers’ tours. “The uncertainty is the real issue,” says Peter Robichaud, the group’s executive director. “You can plan for events, but need to be ready to pivot and deliver activities in different ways, in the event things change.”

That’s an accurate reflection of our experience here at AFR, as we try to adapt. We are grateful for the support from readers, who continue to call in renewals and gift subscriptions, but we couldn’t do it without our advertisers – the companies, large and small, that buy space in this magazine to promote their products and services. A considerable number of them have decided to maintain their visibility – to continue communicating with their customer base, through our publication. So in this issue we have made extra space available for advertisers to provide updates on how they are getting by in these times of constraint. (See pg. 36.)

That gathering at the firehall in Caledonia was upbeat and friendly because most attendees did not yet suspect how bad the coronavirus was going to get. Similarly, not too many would have known about the mound of chips piling up behind the Harry Freeman and Son sawmill in Greenfield, just a 25-minute drive away – although local people were probably aware of the situation that forced the mill to announce its closure a month later. (See Gayle Wilson’s coverage on pg. 30.)

TRIAD

The conference agenda touched on various other ways forestry is changing, including the adoption of institutional wood heating (see pg. 32). On the policy side, Ryan McIntyre, with the Nova Scotia Department of Lands and Forestry, talked about the High Production Forestry (HPF) zone, which is one of the three components in the province’s new “triad” approach to Crown land management, stemming from Bill Lahey’s Independent Review of Forest Practices. The idea is to divide a given land base into three management categories: conservation, ecological forestry, and high-production forestry. In the case of Nova Scotia’s 1.8 million hectares of Crown land, shifting most of the working forest toward ecological management is expected to reduce mid-term harvest volumes, and introducing intensive management in designated HPF areas is supposed to make up the shortfall. 

“We essentially look at it, point blank, as an agricultural model,” said McIntyre. That means even-aged management of monoculture plantations, using every tool in the silviculture toolbox – including fertilizer, which is expected to be necessary to compensate for soil nutrient losses under this short-rotation regime. Planting non-native species and spraying herbicides are deemed to be available options in the HPF zone, but the extent of their use will be determined in the next phase of implementation, when sites are selected.

Several criteria have been put forward: high fertility and good drainage to support rapid tree growth; proximity to the 10 sawmills that acquire more than 10,000 cubic metres of softwood annually; and ecological considerations.

“Right off the bat, we pulled out of consideration any tolerant hardwood forests, any mixed-wood or intolerant hardwood forests that would naturally succeed to a tolerant hardwood forest in the future – we’re not considering those,” said McIntyre. “Even though those are highly productive lands, we don’t consider that proper stewardship, to be converting tolerant hardwood forests to softwood plantations.”

Existing plantations, or White spruce growing on former agricultural land, will be the first candidates – the “low-hanging fruit,” as McIntyre said. However, natural mixed-wood or intolerant hardwood forests on medium-fertility sites are considered eligible for conversion to plantations – and this use of public land will be more controversial. 

“Having that willingness to compromise, to park our biases and ideologies – those are going to be big challenges,” said McIntyre. “We have to have a desire to resolve these matters. If we don’t, then it’s a stalemate.”

According to a discussion paper released in February, a total area of 333,000 hectares has been deemed suitable for HPF designation. That’s 27.8 percent of the working forest on Crown land. It’s hard to imagine this happening on such a large scale. The public may accept the idea of tree farming, to some extent, but this would be an 80 percent increase in Nova Scotia’s agricultural acreage – at a time when the farm sector is under pressure to adopt more ecologically sound practices.

The discussion paper acknowledges that climate change represents “a high degree of uncertainty” for forest management. One thing we can be sure of is that there will be some interesting discussions about who is going to pony up the large investments required in the high-production zone, and who will carry the risks. DL