7 replies to this topic

[Limit]

New Brunswick’s 50 year public forest plan, due at the end of 2011, will determine the fate of our wildlife. Tell the government of New Brunswick to protect our wildlife habitat.

My link Check out this site for more info.

Stop the Liquidation of New Brunswick’s Forest and Wildlife!
Tell the new government to dump the old government’s plan for the public forest.
The former government called its new distribution of clearcuts and conservation on New Brunswick’s public lands “balanced.” But industry gets to clearcut more at the expense of wildlife habitat. How is this a balanced approach? How can our wildlife survive when the new plan does not meet their minimum habitat needs?

Pieces of New Brunswick’s Public Forest Pie





Over the years, old spruce and fir stands and beautiful maple and birch ridges throughout New Brunswick have been clearcut, doused with chemicals and replaced with tree farms. Despite public outcry, a more disastrous plan for our public forest was brought down on New Brunswickers in 2009. First Nations in the province were not included in the decision-making of this new forest plan even though the new plan will affect Aboriginal rights and treaties. It is not too late for the new Alward government to do the right thing and shelved this plan before its planned start in 2012.


In the next 50 years, the former government’s new “balanced” approach will:
Increase the areas where companies can clearcut on our public lands from 68% to 75%.
Slash by one third to one half the area of wildlife habitat on our public forest, from 19.1% to as low as 9%.
Almost triple the area of plantations on our public lands, from 10% to 28%.
Increase protected natural areas, where no logging is allowed, from 4.1% to 7%. Protected natural areas in New Brunswick would still be smaller in area than what other provinces have protected.
According to scientists, the province will not be able to meet minimum habitat requirements. According to Graham Forbes, a wildlife biologist at the University of New Brunswick, species that need old forest will not be able to tolerate the clearcutting, conversion, and plantations if there are not enough untouched stands of 375 ha with trees of a certain size and type.

Many New Brunswickers are shocked to learn that we pay the companies to spray our public lands. According to Natural Resources Canada/Canadian Forestry Service, “the cost of mechanical site preparation, planting, and chemical control of hardwood competitors usually exceeds $1,000 per hectare.” At $1,000 per hectare, New Brunswickers will have paid $612 million for plantations if the plan to convert 28% of our forest to plantations goes ahead in the next 50 years.

Nova Scotia recently announced that they will no longer fund herbicide spraying of their forest and they will reduce the proportion of wood harvested by clearcutting to 50 % over a 5 year period. Last September, P.E.I. announced it will pursue Forest Stewardship Council certification for all of its public forest; this would mean banning clearcutting and herbicide spraying. With almost 90 % of its forested land under public ownership, Quebec banned herbicide spraying of its forest in 2001. New Brunswick should follow its neighbours and move away from destructive forestry.

Tell the new Alward government to listen to the concerns of New Brunswickers and scrap this industry plan.

Hon. David Alward
Premier of New Brunswick
Email: [email protected]
P. O. Box 6000
Fredericton, NB
E3B 5H1

Hon. Bruce Northrup
Natural Resources Minister
Email: [email protected]
Hugh John Flemming Forestry Centre
1350 Regent Street
Fredericton, NB
E3C 2G6

[BuckintheTruck]

NOW is the time to put the pressure on! We only have a couple months left to lobby! You think there are no deer on crown land now...wait till this plan is implemnted!

[Bilingual Hunter]

Interesting story on CBC New Brunswick from late last week :


Crown timber harvest hits 'low point,' report warns



Former cabinet minister calls for new agency to remove politics out of forestry decisions



Environmentalists and forest companies are both being warned they may not get what they want in the next five years, according to the final report from the Crown Land Task Force.
Norm Betts, a University of New Brunswick professor and a former Progressive Conservative finance minister, said in his long-awaited report to the Alward government that the province's timber harvest is at a low point.
Betts’s study looked at the long-term question of how to manage the province's publicly owned forests.
The task force also tackled a thorny short-term issue: how much wood will companies be allowed to cut in the next five-year regulatory cycle.
The industry says it needs more wood to remain viable and to keep people working, primarily in rural communities that have long depended on the industry for employment.
Betts is suggesting there may not be enough wood for that right now.
"In five to 10 years, we're going to see the benefits of all the silviculture work that's been done on Crown land and we're going to reap the benefits of those, and we're in a low period right now that we have to get through,” he said.
But Betts avoided recommending what the allowable cut should be, leaving that contentious decision to the provincial government.
Natural Resources Minister Bruce Northrup said he wants to see a second report, on private woodlots before deciding on the annual allowable cut.
"At the end of the day industry has to know where they're going for the next five years, and we want to take our time, put both reports on the table and get a clear timber objective for the next five years,” Northrup said.
That report on private woodlots is expected to be released in January.
Betts also said environmentalists will have to accept they can't get everything they want when it comes to conservation areas.
New independent agency

Betts also used his report to call on the provincial government to set up an independent agency that would be given the task of maximizing the economic value of the province's forests.
The task force chair said an arm's-length organization would be an improvement on the political pressure put on the minister of natural resources.
"You know it's no secret there's a bit of a revolving door, lobbying process for more wood, and that's a difficult position to be in. He's trying to put a size-12 foot into a size-six shoe, and that doesn't work very often. You get some sore toes when you do that,” Betts said.
The New Brunswick government has already delayed the decision surrounding the annual allowable cut.
The delay was announced earlier this year and that led to allegations from the Conservation Council of New Brunswick that the province's forestry industry was lobbying the Progressive Conservative government to halt a plan to reduce the annual allowable cut.
The province's biggest logging companies helped organize a petition and letter campaign with roughly 3,000 names advocating their desire to stop any plans to reduce logging on Crown land.
The annual allowable cut decision is based on computer modelling and other projections of whether industrial cutting will leave enough wood for the province's forests to keep regenerating themselves.
The provincial government's latest forecast would have reduced the amount of wood forestry companies could cut on Crown land over a five-year cycle starting next year.
The forest industry has said that reducing the annual allowable cut would harm the industry and communities that rely on the sector for jobs.
Recent mill closures have been blamed on a lack of access to Crown land.
However, environmentalists say the quota has to be scaled back because forest regeneration has been slower than expected.

[Bowtech]

They knew 30 years ago there was going to be a crunch now, they just didn't do anthing to plan for it, oh besides planting monocultures but they aren't getting the growth they thought they would on the plantations so now they want to rape our deer yards and everything else. Business as usual, the government will let us do what we want when the time comes! That is their motto.

[nbbucks]

Not sure who the genius was who thought that plantations were the way to go. They grow way slower than a natural cycle that gets thinned. I have a Crabbe piece beside me that has grown up naturally with thinning. It was cut approx. 20 years ago. Go out to a 20 year plantation and there is no comparison in the health of the two. The Crabbe piece has a great mix of softwood and hardwood with a healthy underbrush, grass and plants underneath. The plantations are thick with hardly any sign of life beneath them.

[quill]

So according to that report, the logging companies had a letter and pettition with 3000 names on it to lobby against any decline in cutting operations.

[nbbucks]

We should be able to get more names than that. I'm going to print off the letter from Limit and show some people and see if they will sign on.

[quill]

Well, you would think so. Most people dont want to put the effort into actually get something done, most would rather rant. Words without action is only that "words"