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JUNE TRENHOLM

As co-president of the Green Party of Nova Scotia, I’ve been looking into the controversy that surrounds preserving Acadian forests at the request of leader Thomas Trappenberg.

This land is home to moose and rare flying squirrel. The creatures that live in Acadian old-growth forests sustain the forest and the forest sustains them. There is a way to work with Acadian forests, but sectioning them off with large logging access roads is not it.

Once upon a time, Nova Scotia was covered with old-growth forests. If we still had 50 per cent of our Acadian forest, we could be talking of sustainable harvesting. But we have less than a fraction of one per cent of Acadian forest left. It’s time for Nova Scotia to decide where its economic future lies.

The Corbett-Dalhousie Lakes Forest has been in the news lately, related initially to a logging operation that began there last year. This Annapolis County forest was, unfortunately, not recognized soon enough as a mixed-age, multi-species old forest in order to stop the initiation of wide and multiple logging-access roads, as well as harvesting of trees. This type of landscape is known as an Acadian old-growth forest. The older trees are estimated to be 200 years old and the rings on one of the felled trees identified it as being 138 years old.

The Lahey report, requested by the government, recommended preserving what is left of our Acadian forests, for the sake of the ecosystem and future generations. Unfortunately, most of the original forests have been cut down or purposely killed to favour the production of pulp wood. It will likely take hundreds of years for the Acadian forests to recover, and that is with good management and successful climate-change strategies.

There was hope the remaining Acadian forest could be spared, but cutting of the Dalhousie-Corbett Lakes site was scheduled to resume June 9.

Acadian forests are vital to meet food and habitat requirements for a large variety of species. This forest is home to the endangered Blanding’s turtle and provides nesting sites to many bird species, including migratory ones.

Some decision-makers think displaced animals can just move over to other forests, or fish that can’t survive in a stream or lake can swim up another stream to another lake.

But this is not how nature works. Animal populations die off and species go extinct. Other types of forest will not support the turtles, woodpeckers, owls, chickadees, nuthatches, ovenbird and Eastern bluebird, for example. Many people do not realize that dead hardwood trees with cavities and fallen trees (snags), which are an essential part of Acadian forests, provide necessary shelter and food.

These trees are often seen as useless to the harvesters and they are removed to reduce obstacles to getting the harvest completed. The living, upright trees are home to 22 species of warblers, four species of vireos, and five or six species of flycatchers. Rocky, the flying squirrel, eats the fungi that supplies nourishment to the trees, spreading the spores to other trees, which in turn give Rocky and his friends a place to live.

Deer and our endangered moose do not eat evergreen trees, so they rely on the Acadian forest and field vegetation and clean waterways. The setback of the cutting zone from the lakes in Nova Scotia is 20 metres, but large animals such as moose will not use a buffer of less than 60 metres. The current system of logging roads makes animals more vulnerable to predators such as coyotes. It also heightens the vehicle-traffic hazard, especially for the slow-moving turtles. It has also come to light that the stated 35 per cent of trees to be select-cut does not include the trees removed to build the all-too-plentiful logging roads.

Once the Acadian forests are gone, they are gone for good. The short-term and long-term economic future of Nova Scotia may well depend on ecotourism and presenting a healthy environment for tourists, senior citizens and their families and people wanting to relocate to an inviting province.

The Green Party of Nova Scotia is calling on Nova Scotians to support turning over the Corbett-Dalhousie Lakes forest to the Municipality of the County of Annapolis. The municipality’s intent is to develop and manage a climate forest and demonstrate a new economy based on ecological forestry management that will increase local jobs, recreation and tourism.

June Trenholm is co-president of the Green Party of Nova Scotia