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worthwhile to hack down huge, s Hi Bev and all, Thanks for your response, Bev. I don't take it as a criticism at all. I recognize that there is a complex array of issues involved in doing environmental impact assessments that vary from one situation to another. I worked in the fishing industry during the 1990s when groundfish stocks were collapsing almost everywhere on the Atlantic Coast. A post-mortem analysis by social scientists at that time showed that governments were all for conservation and the importance of following scientific advice, as long as that advice was consistent with political objectives. Unfortunately, it took a collapse of the industry to make all sides realize that they could not continue in unlimited extraction of the resource to meet unrealistic economic and employment objectives. So, a major feature in the maturing of the fishing industry was a revamping of the way environmental assessments were conducted. I was working for small-scale fishers at the time. The fishers and government together developed several conservation management plans for each county. These management plans were monitored and enforced through detailed log-books, dockside monitoring, and at-sea observers. The development of the plans and monitoring measures were paid for by the industry. This was just for groundfish. Other species had different assessment and management processes. Licence fees were greatly increased in all fisheries to pay for increased government costs. Fishers began undertaking conservation research, under the guidance of scientists, in addition to the government science departmental assessments, especially around issues which were of special interest to fishers. For example, lobster fishers carried out lobster larval surveys during the summer when they were not fishing. On a larger scale, Clearwater Fine Foods did ocean bottom mapping using advanced technologies and over a wide ocean area. Both on the small and large scale, all these assessments and research were and still are paid by industry. My knowledge of the forest industry is limited to what I have seen while in the field doing bird surveys over many years, and no doubt, there is much going on that I'm not very informed about. But based on my experience in another renewable resource industry, the forest industry in Nova Scotia appears to be an immature industry that does not appear to take its role in conservation seriously. Do forest operators keep log-books about where and the types of trees they are cutting down and their volume? Do they pay for monitors to observe where bird nests may be located while they are cutting? Is there a third-party firm to assess the on-the-ground impact of operations according to a set of good practice guidelines? Does this third-party firm measure the amount and type of wood taken in a way that can then be fed into an assessment and mapping process? Do they pay for forest inventories and the collection of waypoints on the location of species-at-risk? Are the workers required to have a professional certification which would have an ecological knowledge minimum requirement? If the answer to most of these questions is no, then it is time to bring the forest industry into the Twenty-First Century so they can begin to resemble other industries that have been given the privilege to harvest our resources. With all that said, I totally endorse the initiative that you are suggesting and plan to participate myself. I believe these community-driven conservation initiatives are important in driving change, and this one in particular is a worthy project, independently of the current tragic state of our forests. As a final comment, I have been reluctant to jump into the forestry debate. Again, from my experience in the fishing industry, I don't believe that an adversarial approach is very productive. The fishing industry was highly adversarial, and victories were generally short-lived. Much more progress was made when people showed leadership and just went ahead and did innovative projects, such as you are doing with this proposal. The other way that progress was made was when the adversaries sat down and talked. Southwest Nova Scotia avoided the extremely tense confrontations stemming from the Marshall decision when Frank Meuse, the chief of the Bear River First Nation (L'situk) sat down with the fishers of the LFA 34 lobster committee to discuss how to have a lobster fishery that would most benefit our grandchildren. John -----Original Message----- From: naturens-owner@chebucto.ns.ca <naturens-owner@chebucto.ns.ca> On Behalf Of Bev Wigney Sent: Thursday, February 28, 2019 03:50 To: naturens@chebucto.ns.ca Subject: Re: [NatureNS] Crown land forests - suggestions for ground-truthing sites Hi John, and all, It took me a day to frame what I wanted to say with regard to your comments about the need for biodiversity inventories and ecological impact assessments. I don't mean the following as criticism, John, but wish to build on what you and Donna Crossland have suggested. Let me begin by saying that it would be terrific to see such an enlightened system come to pass, but as I look at the volume of harvest parcels, I wonder how such a thing would even be possible. Yesterday, after reading your email, I decided to go through all of the "harvest update" emails I'd received from NS Forestry Maps (HPMV - Harvest Plan Map Viewer), to see just how many parcels and how many hectares were posted in 2018. It turned out that, at some point last summer, I became so discouraged and annoyed about the whole business that I deleted some of the emails, so there are a scattering of updates missing from my final tally. However, even without those updates, in 2018, I totalled 778 parcels representing over 11,045 hectares. Had I the rest of the emails, I'm guessing the total for 2018 would be considerably higher. Now, one thing