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>>> checking to se Sorry, Bev, should have participated sooner but am chronically preoccupied! An additional concern I have shared with various folks is the effect that overly enthusiastic cutting may have on our water regimes. (1) Hotter drier summers are on the way, and as folks in the stretch from Queens to Yarmouth Counties can attest, severe droughts seem to be getting more serious. Someone said country folks need to get back to the old ways and cut back on their water use during droughts. Swim instead of showering and do dishes the old fashioned way. That’s well-taken, but isn’t enough. Forests, I understand, are important stabilizers of water. Extensive clearcutting means flashier regimes. Would be interesting to talk to folks who work at some of the older power dams. I was told by someone at the Tusket dam that forty-odd years ago, water would rise slowly after heavy rains, then drop gradually and the effect on electricity generation was limited. Now when it rains hard, the water rises faster and drops faster, leading to less stable electricity generation. Gotta wonder, too, what the 105-year-old Hwy. 3 dam at Tusket was taken out after a torrential rain in November, 2010. Yup, it was quite a rain, but there have been very heavy rains in the 105 years previously. Gotta wonder ... Ah, externalities. But destabilization of water resources is pretty serious, and isn’t just an issue for tree-huggers. (2) Not long ago, the media were reporting on blue-green algal blooms along the Carleton River. The Fur Industry Regulations got enacted in 2013. Phosphorus levels started dropping pretty consistently starting in 2015. Drier summers and less runoff may have played a role, but levels continued to drop in 2017, when rains were more "normal." I think heavy rains in 2013 and 2104, a massive spring runoff in 2015, and lower rainfall in recent years have probably all played a part but so, in my opinion, did the Regulations. However, the blooms haven’t disappeared; they’re moving upstream to darker-water lakes whose high colour protected them from blooms in earlier years. I am seeing a very strong association between rainfall early in the summer and colour later on. Less runoff, less "tea" ... So with drier summers, we can expect our lakes to become more vulnerable to blue-green algal blooms. Trees use nutrients. Dead trees gradually liberate them. More seriously, runoff from clearcuts are going to carry a lot more nutrient than runoff from a forested area. I know I know, nature isn’t simple, but forests help maintain water quality, as well as quantity, and those blooms aren’t just an issue for recreation and property values. Some of those little buggers liberate very nasty toxins when they rupture. I, by the way, have been writing the water quality monitoring reports on the Carleton system since 2014. -----Original Message----- From: naturens-owner@chebucto.ns.ca [mailto:naturens-owner@chebucto.ns.ca] On Behalf Of Bev Wigney Sent: March 3, 2019 1:03 PM To: naturens@chebucto.ns.ca Subject: Re: [NatureNS] Crown land forests - suggestions for ground-truthing sites Hi John and all, Thank you for your reply to my email a few days ago. My apologies for not replying sooner, but I've been sidetracked by various events. In any case, I appreciated reading of your experiences with the fishery. In many respects, it is comparable -- especially the overarching notion that there will always be plenty of forest to harvest. I know that, to many, especially those who never drive down the back roads to see the extent of harvesting taking place, all may still seem rather idyllic and as though the supply of trees is infinite. Unfortunately, I don't think that adequately reflects reality, especially in a time of rapid climate change. We have no way of knowing how much or how quickly things will change here in Nova Scotia, but I can't see that it will be so different here that we can ignore what seems likely and expect to somehow skate by what's happening in forests elsewhere on this planet. In fact, we should be paying plenty of attention. Also, we need to be considering how change will impact wildlife -- and how more intensive harvest activity could threaten already stressed forests and wildlife, pushing some populations over the edge. Even without consideration of climate change, in my opinion, we need to be more cautious and less aggressive in our actions. For example, in my county (Annapolis), there has been so much cutting over the past two years that I really have to wonder where owls might nest -- especially as, just a couple of days ago, friends reported that the harvest machines are already rolling in to resume cutting along Morse Road - an area already heavily devastated. Can there be no peace during nesting season? Apparently not. Further, you're quite right regarding monitoring, assessment and accountability. You asked a series of questions -- I'll quote that paragraph here as a reminder to myself and to all of us. > 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. I will go out on a limb to say that the answer to most of your questions is probably "no". In recent months, I have advanced some of these ideas on a couple of forestry discussion pages on Facebook -- such as the idea of having trained monitors do site visits or be on-site during harvesting. My thinking was that we are graduating many young people from community college "ecology" programs, and that there are also many undergrad biology