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I echo, or would if I could, what Donna says here. Had added the calcium
bit to thread as something that speaks to me that gets into your bones. We
are told our forest lands are becoming osteoporotic but they shouldnt be
like us in age they are bioregenerative ecosystems and carry on. They
cannot if they have been robbed by a biomass harvest that removes their
calcium.
appreciate the tack toward clarity.
Nick
On Mon, Jan 11, 2016 at 8:35 AM, John Kearney <john.kearney@ns.sympatico.ca>
wrote:
> Thank you Donna for this very lucid statement on the state of Nova Scotia
> forests. It speaks the truth of my own experience in the woodlands.
> John
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: naturens-owner@chebucto.ns.ca [mailto:naturens-owner@chebucto.ns.ca]
> On Behalf Of Donna Crossland
> Sent: January-10-16 22:43
> To: naturens@chebucto.ns.ca
> Subject: RE: [NatureNS] re Red Herring & Forestry
>
> 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 har