Region Archives: Canada East

A new board has been formed to develop a skilled and professional workforce for the forest industry, a mission of the newly-branded Forestry Sector Council (FSC). The council held its first Annual General Meeting June 23 and appointed a nine-person board of directors. Among them are … Marcus Zwicker, Chief Operating Officer of Freeman Lumber in Greenfield, and David Meister, a forestry professional who operates a sixth-generation forestry operation in New Ross. …The FSC is a re-branding of an entity that can be traced back to the Nova Scotia Forest Industry Regional Industrial Training Committee (RITC) that was formed in 1989. In 2000, the RITCs evolved into sector councils and it evolved into the Nova Scotia Forestry Human Resources Sector Council. Last April, the organization was re-branded to the FSC, a not-for-profit organization. Prior to the appointment of the new board, interim management was provided by the executive of Forest Nova Scotia.

The past several weeks have seen a voracious moth caterpillar eat its way through tree leaves across southern Ontario and Québec, and from Michigan to Vermont.  Since the 1980s, Lymantria dispar has led to enormous outbreaks, often lasting multiple years. The caterpillar has caused a great deal of damage, totalling more than 17,000 square kilometres across Canada. Efforts to manage the insect have cost billions of dollars in both Canada and the United States.  The common name of this insect (gypsy moth) is problematic, so I’ll refer to it as L. dispar. You might also see it called “LDD moth” in some reports. They’re all the same species.  L. dispar can be traced back to one man’s failed business venture, in this case, an attempt to launch a North American silk industry more than a century ago. 

A new Centre of Forest Innovation operated by Nova Scotia Community College (NSCC) will advance the shift to ecological forestry practices in the province and train the next generation of forestry professionals. Today, June 28, the Forestry Innovation Transition Trust announced $6.1 million over four years for NSCC to establish the centre at its Truro campus. The centre will have a simulator immersion lab, demonstration woodlot, innovative technology and programming to meet the needs of the forestry sector. The project responds to several recommendations of Prof. Bill Lahey’s review of forestry practices, including encouraging innovation and enhancing education and training for the province’s forestry professionals. …NSCC will design and deliver core certificate programs for forest inventory and ecological resource management and offer shorter courses for continuing education and skill development. The centre will bring together industry, innovation, research and training.

Additional coverage in the CBC News by Michael Gorman: Forest innovation centre will aim to train workers for industry’s future

Ben Smith

WENTWORTH, N.S. — On Sunday, Ben Smith walked with fellow disc golf aficionados through a selectively harvested woodlot in the Wentworth Valley talking excitedly about what will be his 28th course. …For the former tree planter and landscaper, this course will combine a lot of life experience. “This course will show high-end, sustainable forestry,” said Smith. “From the forest standpoint, we said let’s do selective harvest that maintains the forest canopy and keeps as much biomass on the floor as possible and then reverse-engineer a disc-golf course.” …“There’s this public perception that presumes all cuts are bad cuts, when that’s not the case,” said Smith. “This course will show primary cuts, mature stands and tell the story of how the forest will grow over the years while teaching people how to identify tree species, how a layered forest works and why these things matter.”

MILTON, Ontario — More than 880,000 new trees have been planted across Ontario this spring in honour of Canadian veterans, thanks to the combined efforts of the Highway of Heroes (HOH) Tree Campaign and Forests Ontario. These newly planted seedlings are adding to an existing green monument along Canada’s busiest highway. The HOH Tree Campaign pays tribute to veterans by planting a tree for each of the two million Canadians that have served in the Canadian Armed Forces. The HOH/Forests Ontario partnership reduces tree planting costs for eligible landowners living near Highway 401, from Windsor to Cornwall, to meet this goal. …Having rooted nearly 1.6 million trees and created over 700 hectares of new forest in total, the HOH Campaign is poised to be completed by the end of 2022.

Steve Ginnish

The final day of hearings into New Brunswick’s use of glyphosate took an emotional turn Friday when a member of the Eel Ground First Nation appeared before the committee.  Steve Ginnish, director of forestry for Eel Ground-based Mi’gmawe’l Tplu’taqnn Inc., noted he was a late addition to the hearings’ agenda.  “We were not initially invited to participate in the hearings but felt it was important and necessary for you to hear an Indigenous perspective, so we asked to be added to the witness list,” Ginnish said.  Ginnish outlined basic treaty rights and shared his frustration with the province’s spraying of glyphosate, which he says has “directly affected our medicines, food supply and therefore the health of our community members.”   “We have long argued that more consideration is given to industry when it comes to forest management than to the actual health of the forest,” he said.  

The third day of hearings on the use of herbicides and pesticides in New Brunswick highlighted divided opinions on the use of glyphosate, depending on what sector it’s used in. Estimates given earlier in the week suggested 90 per cent of global glyphosate use was in agriculture. But in New Brunswick, agriculture accounts for just 11 per cent of glyphosate usage. According to a 2016 report from the chief medical officer of health, forestry accounts for 61 per cent of glyphosate usage in the province, while industry makes up another 27 per cent. …“In New Brunswick, we use it less in agriculture, so it’s forestry that concerns us, and for industrial use especially under powerlines,” said Céline Surette, a professor of environmental chemistry at Université de Moncton.

Swift action and the strategic use of a biological insecticide have spared New Brunswick forests the worst of a feared outbreak, Atlantic forestry experts say. A spruce budworm infestation that swept the province in the 1970s, causing much deforestation and leaving the forestry industry reeling, was poised for a repeat attack in 2016. But on day two of four days of hearings into pesticide use in the province, Canadian Forest Service insect ecologist Rob Johns said the insecticide BTK has blunted the blow this time around. Johns said the service adopted a targeted, early-intervention strategy, using the narrow spectrum insecticide to stay on top of “hotspots” as they erupt. … “Under this early intervention strategy, we’ve seen no tree mortality and only light defoliation,” he said, adding “a little intervention goes a very long way.”

Lois Corbett & Jon MacNeill

The controversial herbicide glyphosate took centre stage during the first of four days of hearings in Fredericton on Tuesday. The hearings, held by the standing committee on climate change and environmental stewardship, are intended to review pesticide and herbicide use in New Brunswick.  But on opening day, the presentations focused almost exclusively on the pros and cons of glyphosate. 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. Health Canada has stood by the scientific evidence it used to approve the continued use of glyphosate in weed killers, and says it has been found unlikely to pose a carcinogenic risk to humans. On Tuesday, the Conservation Council of New Brunswick was first up on a four-day agenda of more than a dozen presenters.

Every year in Canada, six trillion litres of municipal wastewater are partially treated and released into the environment, while another 150 billion litres of untreated sewage are discharged straight into pristine surface waters. Now researchers have found a way to stem that flow: by filtering the waste through the roots of willow trees. Experimenting with a plantation in Quebec, the scientists estimate that over 30 million litres of primary wastewater per hectare can be treated using ‘bio-refinery’ annually. …“We’re still learning how these trees can tolerate and treat such high volumes of wastewater, but willows’ complex ‘phyto’-chemical toolkit is giving us exciting clues,” said Eszter Sas, lead author of the study at Université de Montréal. Willow trees are naturally tolerant of contamination and their roots filter out the high nitrogen in sewage, actually tripling the biomass produced, which can then be harvested for renewable lignocellulosic biofuels, an alternative to fossil fuels.

Several beech trees on Prince Edward are showing signs of an invasive species called the beech leaf-mining weevil. These weevils can disrupt the flow of nutrients and kill entire trees. Simon Wilmot, coordinator for the P.E.I. Invasive Species Council, said it’s uncertain how much damage the weevil will cause to the Island’s beech trees, but “it can spread easily.” …”It most likely came over in some firewood from Nova Scotia,” he said. …Wilmot said unfortunately there is no effective way to fight against the weevil. There is an environmentally friendly insecticide called TreeAzin that can be injected directly into beech trees and kill weevil larvae. However, the insecticide must be injected on a regular basis and therefore would not be an efficient large scale solution. …The Invasive Species Council asks anyone who spots weevil damage on beech trees to contact them.

A spraying program is quadrupling to battle rising spruce budworm numbers in western Newfoundland, but Parks Canada has decided to opt out of the effort and let nature take its course within Gros Morne National Park.  About 140,000 hectares of forest, from the Port au Port Peninsula northwards to Castor’s River on the Northern Peninsula will be sprayed from the sky with biological insecticide BTK beginning in mid-June.  That’s almost four times the area the provincial government sprayed last year when it began an early intervention spraying program against the insect, whose ravenous appetite for spruce and fir can ravage forests — a major outbreak in Newfoundland in the 1970s affected 90 per cent of the island’s trees.  Scientists aren’t calling the current circumstances an outbreak just yet, but the numbers of budworm in the trees is increasing — fuelled by moths that lay budworm eggs carried over on air currents from an outbreak in Quebec.