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 […]
We’re about to learn just how subservient Nova Scotia is to the forest industry
Morning File, Tuesday, December 4, 2018
1. Clearcutting “The McNeil government is promising less clearcutting on crown lands through new ‘interim’ harvesting guidelines introduced yesterday in response to a comprehensive report on forestry practices prepared by University of King’s College president Bill Lahey last August,” reports Jennifer Henderson: It’s unclear how much the controversial practice will be reduced until after permanent […]
Government takes tentative first steps to reduce clearcutting
The McNeil government is promising less clearcutting on crown lands through new “interim” harvesting guidelines introduced yesterday in response to a comprehensive report on forestry practices prepared by University of King’s College president Bill Lahey last August. It’s unclear how much the controversial practice will be reduced until after permanent guidelines are introduced by the...
The Lahey report on managing Nova Scotia forests was published three months ago; when is the government going to act on it?
How should Nova Scotia manage one of its key public resources — the forests — to make them healthier and more economically productive? Three months ago, the province received a report with 45 recommendations on how to achieve those goals. The Independent Review of Forest Practices In Nova Scotia was authored by Bill Lahey, a...
True love: KFC, a bottle of Vodka, Sun Chips, and a copy of the Uranus Examiner
Morning File, Friday, September 14, 2018
News 1. South Shore bus service “Starting this week,” writes Examiner transportation columnist Erica Butler, “Maritime Bus now offers three trips day, seven days a week, from Halifax to south shore destinations like Chester, Bridgewater, and Lunenburg.” And hopefully, the provincial and municipal governments involved will get on board with promoting the heck out of […]
Fire in the city, gold in the hills
Morning File, Tuesday, September 4, 2018
Tim here. I’m back in Nova Scotia (not quite in Halifax yet, but heading that way) after a much-needed vacation. I can’t thank our guest writers enough for filling in — they each did wonderfully, so well that now I’m thinking I need to take more vacations. News 1. Tidal power “Tomorrow (Wednesday), an Irish […]