Voluntary Planning

Barriers and Issues:
Too much of the resource tied up in one use packages called Wilderness Protected Areas. Don't get me wrong: the protection of key areas is critical to the environmental well being of the landscape. However, once "protected" the forest must become older, stagnate, and either burn, become a breeding ground for insects (like the Pine Beetle out west) or in most cases in the Acadian Forest: catastrophic collapse. Some won't, because they are ecologically suited for old living species such as sugar maple, etc., but it is a fool's dream to think that old balsam fir will live forever. Make areas protected for a century. Make other areas ready during that century. Then, alternate areas, keeping those certain special places that can last, forever.

The biggest barrier to this resource is the lack of intelligent information getting to the public. For example: the stigma of "clearcut," or "spray." The papers recently carried a picture of a "clearcut" from my area. It is only two acres in size, but the stigma allowed the conception to be blown into the "entire landscape was denuded." I was just in England. I saw larger clearcuts there than I have seen here for many a day, and not a word was said about them. A sharp contrast.

Additional Comments:
The Department of Natural Resources (DNR) is asking the Public for their input into four of the programs that it administers. The irony is overwhelming.
Who will respond to the call for presentations and written submissions? Mostly those who have an axe to grind; a soap box to jump up on; a "noble cause" to promote; or see an opportunity to gain attention to themselves or their ideals. There will be relatively few by people who are happy with the status quo. There will be some by the people most directly affected by the policies who fear that negative changes will occur because special interest groups will be there in organized and vocal numbers. They fear that the city dweller will have the largest say in any changes to what happens in the country due simply to those numbers.

Should DNR be asking the Public for advice on matters in which DNR itself is by far the most qualified to address? Would you ask a doctor how to build a rocket, or a rocket scientist how to grow potatoes? Would a farmer be the best person to ask a legal opinion of; or a lawyer know how to grow trees, or a writer of children’s books necessarily know how to tell a frog from a toad? Any of these people might in fact know these things, but for the best bang for the buck, you ask the person trained in law for legal advice; you ask the farmer for agricultural wisdom; you ask the writer to write. You should leave the forests to DNR, formerly known for many years as the Department of Lands and Forests.

DNR is a government department. It is subject to politics. Today’s politics and policies may be completely different from what they were thirty years ago, and it is a given that they will not be the same in thirty years hence. Let DNR manage what it is already mandated to manage. Hold them accountable, by all means, but have faith and trust. Big brother is not out to get you.

Take the politics out of DNR. Let it use its special knowledge, decades of experience, the results of past practices (call them experiments or lessons,) and let them build on those. No one knew in 1908 what the forests would be like in 2008, but given the Fernow report of that era, the safe bet would have been on complete deforestation. People learn from the past. Right now the people seem to have forgotten the past, and want to throw away our future.

With all the talk of going green, of ecosystem, or eco- this and eco- that, I hope that we don’t forget the other eco- word: economy. Obviously there is not complete deforestation. In contrast, there is right now in Nova Scotia more wood than there was in 1908. The province, through the efforts of the Dept. of Lands and Forests initially and DNR lately, has continued to improve its forests, to the point where we as a public feel it safe to set off one eighth of all our province in forested Protected zones, where no forestry or mining can occur. I think it’s great that we feel we have reached such a point, but am obliged to the particular government department which has made it all possible.

Who else should manage the province’s forested interests?

Who has the staff with the expertise, the knowledge, the training, the education, the desire to work in the field? Obviously DNR. Which Department started the process of Wilderness Protected Areas? DNR. Who is implementing the ecological landscape planning process? DNR. Public opinion counts. In a day when electronic submissions can come from anywhere on the globe in less than a second, one hopes that the opinion listened to is that of someone who has to live with the results.

My hope is that we don’t over-protect our resource merely because “Environment” is the current buzzword of society. Don’t sanctify trees merely because they are trees. Don’t make them the sacred cows of Nova Scotia. They are necessary; they are pleasing. They also die and rot, releasing every bit of the carbon they once absorbed from the atmosphere, back into the air in the form of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and that dirty carbon gas: methane. It takes a hundred years to make a big tree. The whole thing can rot and disintegrate in ten. That math is counter to the Kyoto method of counting the forests as carbon sinks. They are only sinks if they are managed! Un-managed forests are actually carbon contributors, essentially due to the stagnated growth of old trees, and the eventual death and decay of the wood.

A tree is only helping the atmosphere while it is growing. A grown tree is carbon neutral, while a dead tree just adds carbon to the air.