Region Archives: Canada East

The Honourable Derrick Bragg, Minister of Fisheries, Forestry and Agriculture is encouraging Newfoundlanders and Labradorians to plant a tree to mark National Forest Week 2021, being celebrated September 19 to 25. During National Forest Week, the department is making spruce tree seedlings available to the public, free of charge, at all Forest Management District Offices throughout the province. Individuals, schools, youth organizations and community groups, are encouraged to participate in this worthwhile initiative aimed at highlighting the numerous benefits of our forest resources. Planting instructions will be provided to everyone who participates. The initiative helps support this year’s theme for National Forest Week, ‘Our forests – continually giving’, which acknowledges the numerous ways our forests benefit the lives of every Canadian.

The forest’s location is secret. Chris McGee, tree seed collector, will permit only disclosure of the nearest town: Dornoch, Ont., 175 km northwest of Toronto. On a clear morning before most have awoken, McGee arrives in the plantation. Rows of red pine trees stand as silent sentinels. A red squirrel high in their branches emits what the naturalist Charles G.D. Roberts described in this magazine in 1930 as “a shrill chr-r-r-r of virulent disapproval.” McGee smiles. He sees the squirrel as an ally. …Chris and his brother Colin are fourth-­generation collectors. Trees produce seed on cycles of up to five years; the brothers succeed because they know where and when to look. Like the squirrels, they are ruthless about keeping secrets. …McGee often collects seeds for Forests Ontario, which, with its partners, has planted over 34 million trees across Canada since 2008 and owns about 205 million seeds in cold storage. 

Sunshine Coast Community Forest (SCCF) operations manager Warren Hansen anticipates roadbuilding at its HM 50 block near Trout Lake will begin next month, with logging to follow before the end of the year. SCCF’s call for bids to do the work closed Sept. 15.  In an interview with Coast Reporter, Hansen could not confirm when SCCF board representatives would meet with staff to approve the award of contracts for harvesting about 7,500 cubic metres of timber and establishing 1.3 kilometers of access roads within that block.  Hansen said that watershed and ecosystem assessment reports for HM 50 have been prepared and that both support proceeding with the work. SCCF board chair Kathleen Suddes told Coast Reporter that the reports will be posted on SCCF’s website (sccf.ca) as soon as possible.

BARRIE, Ontario — A special ceremony Friday will recognize the Simcoe County forest. The Canadian Institute of Forestry (CIF) will be presenting the prestigious national award to county staff. The Warden, Deputy Warden and forestry staff will be on hand for the presentation. Each year the CIF presents a number of awards in recognition of outstanding and unique accomplishments to forestry in Canada. National Forest week runs from September 19 to the 25 and coincides with Simcoe County Forests’ 100th-anniversary celebrations in 2022. The Simcoe County forests are the largest municipally-owned forest network in Ontario at more than 33,000 acres. [END]

Kayleigh Rideout

TIMMINS, Ontario — The Timmins Public Library in partnership with the Wintergreen Fund for Conservation will be hosting a virtual information session on geocaching while introducing the oldest and the largest trees in the area. “This event is going to be a celebration of some of our biggest and best trees in the Timmins area,” said, Kayleigh Rideout, a reference librarian at the Timmins Public Library. “We will also be discussing about geocaching so, we’re going to be showing you how you can find these trees yourself, their exact locations and how to best hike there.” She said Mark Joron, of the Wintergreen Fund for Conservation, will be the guest speaker. 

Benoit Charette

For months, environmental groups and elected officials had called for a moratorium on logging operations and protected status for the region. The provincial government on Tuesday announced it had halted authorized logging operations along the Péribonka River in the Lac-Saint-Jean region, and that the area would be designated a protected zone. “The Péribonka River is a jewel of our natural heritage and we must protect it,” said Quebec Environment Minister Benoit Charette in a communiqué. For months, environmental groups and elected officials had called for a moratorium on logging operations and protected status for the region. Tuesday’s announcement will allow authorities to “take stock” of how the forests are used in terms of logging, resort and tourist activities, added provincial Forestry Minister Pierre Dufour.

NOVA SCOTIA — A group of dedicated neighbours in Annapolis County, N.S., have saved 19 hectares of mature forest and wetlands from clearcutting. “It was just amazing to see how much people really invested in protecting this small corner of rural Nova Scotia,” Laura Bright, a member of the Arlington Forest Protection Society, told CBC. Last June, a group of neighbours on Arlington Road in Hampton discovered that a large swath of forest on top of North Mountain was at risk of clearcutting by a logging company. …Bright said if the logging company continued its plan, a road would have been built through the wetlands and into the forest, destroying important ecosystems and habitats. By September, the group raised $92,000 to cover the cost of the land and legal fees… [and] officially purchased the land in January.

Erik Holmstrom, Chief Bill Petiquan and Lorraine Cobiness

It was a special day yesterday for Miisun – Miitigoog Integrated Resource Management Co. and for Wabauskang First Nation. A signing ceremony was held yesterday welcoming Wabauskang into the Miitigoog/Miisun partnership. The signing now allows the First Nation a seat at the table and a voice in what happens to the forest around the community. …The benefit of the signing is it now gives Miitigoog and Miisun the ability to manage the forest in and around the Wabauskang First Nation community. “…having more First Nation communities just allows us to better manage the forest, to better understand the values that are out there, and ensure that we’re maintaining a sustainable and healthy forest on the Kenora and Whiskey Jack Forests,” said Erik Holmstrom Vice President of Miitigoog. Petiquan added that with the signing he hopes that he will be able to have more control of where the cutting is done.

The idea of a machine being able to autonomously harvest and move logs in the forest may seem like a far-fetched idea that is decades away. But, autonomous forestry machinery may be closer than we think. FPInnovations has been developing an autonomous log loader that is now capable of detecting and handling logs on the ground. The project is part of FPInnovations’ Forestry 4.0 initiative, through which the organization is developing and testing new technology to help address three main challenges: the labour shortage facing the forest industry, inadequate connectivity in remote forestry operations, and the extremely variable operating environments operators work in. The main goal behind developing an autonomous log loader is to address the first challenge: the labour shortage, said Sylvain Volpé, forestry manager at FPInnovations.

Catherine Potvin

The Royal Society of Canada (RSC) announced fifteen Canadian scientists, scholars, and researchers who have been honoured with RSC awards and medals for their outstanding achievements in their fields. Professor Catherine Potvin is the 2021 recipient of the RSC’s prestigious Sir John William Dawson Medal for her significant interdisciplinary research. …Potvin is a Professor in the Department of Biology at the Faculty of Science, a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Climate Change Mitigation and Tropical Forest, a Trottier Fellow from the Trottier Institute for Science and Public Policy, and a Fellow of the RSC. She is an expert in tropical rainforest conservation and climate change whose work has focused on forest ecosystems and tropical forest carbon stocks—the amount of carbon that has been sequestered from the atmosphere and stored within the forest ecosystem—with particular attention to the land-use decision-making processes of Indigenous groups.

Catherine Cullingham

A small insect is causing big problems for Canada’s forestry industry. The mountain pine beetle (MPB) is about the size of a grain of rice and it’s common to find more than 100 of them on a mass-attacked tree. Foresters first noted the beetle’s devastating impact on British Columbia’s lodgepole pine forests in the 1990s. A series of warm winters fuelled the outbreak, and the MPB soon spread east into Alberta, where it began to attack other species, including the jack pine, which is prevalent throughout the boreal forest that stretches all the way to the Atlantic. …Understanding why some populations of lodgepole pine have a genetic resilience to the pest and mitigating the risks faced by jack pine are the main goals of a new project co-led by Carleton Biology Prof. Catherine Cullingham, who recently received $6.4 million for multidisciplinary research that will better inform policy makers and forest managers in government and industry.

The Canadian Institute of Forestry in Mattawa hopes to attract more women and under-represented groups to that sector thanks to a project that has received federal funding. The institute has been working in partnership with the Centre for Social Intelligence on the Free to Grow project for the last three years, and has received $550,383 from the federal government to support the initiative. Mark Pearson, director of the Canadian Institute of Forestry said, “It allows us to continue … making this a stronger initiative and having greater outcome and influence.” …women currently represent 17 per cent of the forest sector’s workforce. Visible minorities represent nine per cent of the workforce, while Indigenous people make up seven per cent of workers in the sector. With the funding, they were able to set up a website and connect with forestry sector companies and organizations across Canada to build partnerships and bring them onboard with the initiative.

Indigenous leaders have urged provincial politicians to ban the spraying of glyphosate in New Brunswick forests, expressing skepticism about federal scientific reports that found the herbicide is safe to use.  They told the legislature’s committee on climate change and environmental stewardship that the product is a poison that is harming forests, rivers, and plant and animal life.  “It’s easy to sit here and say from Health Canada’s perspective that there’s no danger. I beg to differ. I don’t think the studies have been done,” said Chief Terry Richardson of the Pabineau First Nation.  Glyphosate, used mainly by the province’s forestry and agriculture sectors to control weeds and other vegetation, has been the subject of several lawsuits that allege it is a health risk.   In June, the committee held a week of hearings on the issue without inviting Indigenous representatives to appear.

DRYDEN, Ont. — The nearly summer-long ban on outdoor burning in Northwestern Ontario has been lifted. The province’s Aviation, Forest Fire and Emergency Services agency says the Restricted Fire Zone that was first declared at the end of June was terminated Wednesday morning. It means residents in all parts of the region can once again have campfires. The fire ban had been lifted gradually as the risk of forest fires diminished in recent weeks, starting with areas east of Lake Nipigon, and followed last week with the Thunder Bay district. AFFES reported Tuesday evening that there are still 79 active fires in the region, including six that are not under control. However, 58 fires are only being monitored.

Fourteen millimetres long and bright green in colour, the emerald ash borer may not look like a threat.  But conservationists say the beetle could devastate Canada’s forests within the next few years if it isn’t contained.  “It’s expanding its range,” said Andrew Holland, a spokesperson for the Nature Conservancy of Canada.  “Once this beetle gets established in a certain area, 99 per cent of those ash trees will die within eight to 10 years.”  Holland said the best way to stop the spread of the beetle is by limiting the transportation of firewood.  “It just sort of gets around on movement of firewood in the nursery stock, branches, that type of thing,” said Holland. “It’s a hitchhiker and it can cause a lot of damage.”  Jim Verboom, a co-owner of Nova Tree in Glenholme, N.S., has been in the lumber industry for 40 years.

Parks Canada is taking steps to tackle an insect that’s poised to decimate 80 per cent of the eastern hemlocks at Kejimkujik National Park and Historic Site over the next 10 years. The hemlock woolly adelgid is wreaking havoc on hemlocks in eastern North America, including in Nova Scotia. …Some trees at Kejimkujik have already been infested with the adelgid, though the infestation is still in its early stages. Parks Canada wants to ward off more damage by treating some trees in Kejimkujik with insecticide and by changing the makeup of the forest in the park’s main campground, Jeremy’s Bay. A pilot project planned for this fall would see an insecticide injected into about 1,500 hemlock trees in the Big Dam Lake area. While the type of insecticide… is normally prohibited in national parks, it may be permitted for exceptional uses.