Our Plan: A Way Forward

The aim of the Ecology Action Centre's Forestry program is to bring about a gradual, feasible shift in how we manage our forests. We want the industry to move from clearcutting and intensive forest management to ecologically responsible forestry practices. There’s no magic required; there are ways to maintain and restore forests using ecologically responsible forestry.

Our objective is to see our natural Acadian Forest restored and maintained, and, with it, higher value jobs for rural Nova Scotians. We don’t want to shut our forest industry down. But we do want it to use our forests in a way that benefits everyone, and creates a healthy environment.

Here are recommendations to the provincial government and the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to improve forestry in Nova Scotia:

1. DNR must make climate change mitigation and adaptation an over-arching goal of forest management policy.

2. DNR's new forest strategy (due by the end of 2010) must include a substantial transition away from clearcutting and toward uneven-age and restorative harvesting methods. 

3. DNR should institute a policy of ecosystem-based management on the vast majority (90%) of the working forest on Crown land, and, as part of this policy, implement new best practices guidelines for harvesting and silviculture that incorporate ecosystem-based management.

4. The province should overhaul the Forest Sustainability Regulations to ensure that a substantially higher proportion of silviculture effort in Nova Scotia is directed to uneven-aged and restorative treatments.  Over a five-year period, increase funding for quality-improvement silviculture activities (Category 7) to 50% of the total silviculture budget; educational workshops and woodlot management plans should be included in this funding.

5. The Nova Scotia government should state its preference for FSC certification, and work aggressively to increase the number of FSC-certified forestry operations in the province.

6. The Province should recognize that the permanent forest loss and liquidation harvesting negatively impact all forest values and users, and work aggressively to stem them both.

8. The Department of Natural Resources must ensure that the forest ecosystem is not further degraded by harvesting of biomass for biofuels; biomass harvesting must not compromise site productivity and habitat.

9. The Province must make the value-added forest products industry a priority of economic development.

10. The Province should develop an aggressive program to mitigate impacts from logging roads.  The program should include targets for reducing logging road density by permanently decommissioning selected roads that are not essential for resource management.

11. The Province should recognize the critical role woodlot owners play in forest management by providing organisational support and encouraging quality improvement silviculture.