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Thanks Donna for getting us back to "Nature".
Paul.
On 2016-01-10, at 10:43 PM, Donna Crossland wrote:
> There is no whole-tree harvesting allowed on Crown lands. Bob Bancroft and
> I suggested this be enacted back in 2010 during the Natural Resources
> Strategy, and it may be one of the very few good things (sadly) that stemmed
> from our work. But as we know, Crown land is a very small portion of the
> province. Private lands are where the atrocities are presently occurring,
> and there is an increasing focus on how to convince private land holders to
> relinquish their wood.
>
> Foresters have been ordered to go and find suitable private lands for "full
> tree" harvesting for some companies. The criteria are deplorably low and
> devastating on the ecology of the land. Search for lands that are at least
> 50 % treed (species not important, but hardwood is best for most operations)
> that are 4 inches in diameter (DBH) or greater. (Teeny, tiny trees, in
> other words.)
>
> Our Nova Scotia forests are being cut long before maturity and long before
> they are allowed to recover and grow to the next successional stage.
> "Stands" of grey/wire birch (barely meet the criteria of a "stand") are
> being mowed down; this little tree which generally indicates past abuses
> wherever it grows by its very nature is never allowed to 'heal the land' or
> restore soil, as is part of its natural ecological role. The flattening of
> such stands resets the land to the same early successional stage. Other
> stand types are also being cut using the same criteria. Yellow birch, sugar
> maple, no matter-all sent through the chipper. It doesn't matter if it's
> green or brown biomass. There are no laws for private. I sometimes lie
> awake at night during springtime and wonder how many bird nests and young
> are being sent through the chipper while we sleep (operations go all night
> and day, no matter the season in the mad dash for the last pitiful grab).
>
> The tops of some of the softwoods, if present in the stand during a full
> tree chipping operation, may be taken back out to the site and scattered
> around. The goal is not environmental so much as to please the buyer who
> wants mainly hardwood chips for industrial pellets overseas. And other wood,
> of course is going to the Port Hawkesbury burner. Biomass burners are
> starting to pop up here and there elsewhere in NS, too. (We no longer grow
> trees to saw log size, and no new saw log mills have been started up for
> ages.)
>
> Companies such as Reeves out of New Ross puts most of their cut through the
> chipper. Chips are going to Sheet Harbour and from there I am not certain
> to where. I know that several years ago, some operations were quietly
> shipping wood chips across the Atlantic to biomass burners in Europe so they
> could state they were generating 'green energy'. It would be laughable if
> it were not so sad.
>
> I am happy to see this topic being focussed upon by the naturalist
> community, and I am grateful to Jamie Simpson's research into biomass. This
> is a very important subject, and one that our current politicians would not
> disagree with. More that I would like to share with folks on that later,
> but there is another item or two that I would like to address before bed-
>
> About thinning: What I've been reading in this thread is an old school,
> 'agronomist' perspective still widely taught in forestry, and a strongly
> held mantra with foresters, but one not generally adopted by
> biologists/ecologists/naturalists who are taught to think more broadly on
> the incredible complexities of forest ecology. Thinning trees is done
> mostly to speed up growth and yields. The objective to cut down trees
> sooner. There are stacks of research papers on this, but some of the more
> recent ones question the whole practice of thinning and its economic
> practicality. Thinning is also highly detrimental to forest songbirds, and
> many folks will admit that they knowingly destroy countless nests while
> thinning during springtime. Nonetheless, I hear all sorts of justifications
> for the practice, but the truth is that nature does just fine on her own,
> and we should learn to wait and be patient. She'll grow the best trees. (I
> believe this was Mary's well-stated point of view also.) I've got at least
> one research paper that concluded that thinning a spruce stand simply acted
> as a vector for fungal infection through nearly the entire stand. (I can
> reference it, but no time to find it now.) Natural forests will self-thin
> in their own time, deciding on their own which is the strongest individual
> genetic stock to survive in each microhabitat situation, and they don't need
> help from us. However, the forester knocking on your door and wanting to
> cut your wood will spin a different story, often alarmist about the great
> need to thin, or simply (usually) to cut down all the trees in your woodlot
> as a great favour to you before disaster strikes ("the sky is falling"
> analogy).
>
> From what I've read on this thread, it seems that all forest types are being
> painted by the same brush, as if they all act/react in the same way.
> Generalizing about trees dying all at once usually refers to the early
> successional forests, rather than the late successional forests that were
> more commonly supported on Nova Scotia landscapes at one time (excluding CB
> highlands). Multi-aged, late successional forests do not die all at once
> (regardless of insect infestation or catastrophic wind), and will
> self-perpetuate and self-thin. I would hazard a guess that the forests I've
> read that are dying all at once are white spruce (hit hard by spruce bark
> beetle). That situation does not speak for the rest.
>
> About wildlife use: Another aggravating point resurrected in this thread is
> that in forestry school we are taught to manage stands for "wildlife", but
> that wildlife is generally the snowshoe hare and white-tailed deer, species
> that require some disturbance to survive. It is so frustrating to
> repeatedly see forestry posters with the deer prominently featured, as if it
> is a species that points to a well-managed forest. While correcting student
> papers on forest management at UNB Dept of Forestry, I never once read a
> well thought out management plan that managed forests in the best interests
> of moose, marten, fisher, brook trout, or Blackburnian warblers. Such
> species would have made much better indicators of good forest management
> practices. Alas, even deer require some shelter in winter storms, best
> provided in our closed-canopy hemlock stands-wonderfully 'barn-like' and
> peaceful in winter. We all need to visit such stand types in winter to