On the morning of July 15, Iris Communications’ Sean Lewis sent out a press release on behalf of Paper Excellence. It was chockablock with carefully calibrated and curated PR, informing us that Northern Pulp’s 54-year-old pulp mill in Pictou County was set to become “a “best-in-class operation” and “one of the world’s cleanest, most environmentally […]
Public engagement, future of the forestry, and the Harvest Plans Map Viewer
Activists says the online tool where Nova Scotians can submit feedback on what happens to the forests on public lands is inaccessible and lacks historical data.
In December 2020, Mike Lancaster was invited to attend an online meeting of the Western Region Stakeholder Interaction Committee, which he describes as a venue for those holding forestry licences on Crown land and “other key stakeholders to engage with the Department of Lands and Forestry on forestry and planning issues for the western region […]
The Borealization of Acadia
Due to climate change, warm weather-friendly trees should be dominating our forests; instead, cold-weather species are taking over. We now understand why — thanks to a phone call from the Irving company to lean on a professor's dean.
A new study shows that since European settlement, the rich mix of deciduous and conifer trees in the temperate forest — known by settlers as “Acadian” forest — of the Maritimes, New England, and southeastern Quebec has undergone “borealization,” meaning there has been “widespread replacement of temperate tree species by boreal species,” which are common […]
The Climate Emergency
Part 4: Our current economy can't address the crisis; what are we going to do about it?
Previously in this series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. It’s not often that I root for the anti-hero in a book, but it seems that as I neared the end of Jeremy Lent’s latest book, The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity’s Search for Meaning — perhaps the longest book I’ve ever read at […]
“Who speaks for the mainland moose and Canada warbler?” asks judge
Nova Scotia Supreme Court Justice Christa Brothers will decide whether the Minister of Lands and Forestry has failed to live up to the obligations set out in the Endangered Species Act to protect wildlife in the province. “We seek the Court’s assistance as a last resort,” said lawyer Jamie Simpson, representing the Federation of Nova...
Iain Rankin promises big changes in forestry management, but the province is moving slowly
Give Lands and Forestry Minister Iain Rankin credit for trying. Last November, Rainkin accepted all 45 recommendations from Bill Lahey, a former deputy environment minister and university president hired to figure out how to make Nova Scotia forests healthier and more productive. Lahey’s recommendations were aimed at improving biodiversity and reducing the amount of...
Truth Be Told: Nova Scotia’s forest department hires a PR firm with forest industry ties to help it with transparency
Cover photo: recent drone shot of a clearcut located between Kejimkujik National Park and Lake Rossignol. Photo courtesy Jeff Purdy. The Nova Scotia Department of Lands and Forestry (DLF) recently hired DG Communications, a public relations firm, to assess the department’s progress in meeting the recommendations of William Lahey’s Independent Review of Forest Practices, specifically […]
“We are down to our last month’s rent”: naturalists say clearcutting is accelerating
“I worked at the Bowater-Mersey mill for 38 years, and our provincial government makes Bowater look like an environmentalist!” said Brian Muise. Muise, a member of the Queens County Fish and Game Association, made his comment at the annual meeting of the Nova Scotia Federation of Anglers and Hunters in Truro on Saturday. Muise is […]
Fixing freedom of information in NS (and jails), pulp mill politics, and plastics – all that, and more.
Morning File, Wednesday, January 16, 2019
I’m Joan Baxter, filling in for Tim today. News 1. Freedom of Information in Nova Scotia – the failure and the fix As Tim wrote, yesterday Nova Scotia privacy commissioner Catherine Tully and auditor general Michael Pickup released their reports on the FOIPOP website security failure. Both painted damning pictures of how the government handled […]
Turning protesters into pets
How Nova Scotia's forestry regulators are already undermining the Lahey Report, and what we can do about it.
Cover photo: a clearcut adjacent to the Old Annapolis Nature Reserve. The forest to the right of the clearcut is now being proposed as a second clearcut, which would create a total clearcut area of roughly 150 acres. Photo courtesy Mike Lancaster. In her eloquent and thought-provoking 2014 book, Capitalism: A Ghost Story, Arundhati Roy […]