KJIPUKTUK (Halifax) – Half hour west of Halifax, spanning 32,000 acres between the Panuke and Indian lakes immediately north of Highway 103, there waits a wilderness, simmering with potential and public use, aspiring to protection from our provincial government, all the while being slowly disassembled by people with chainsaws.

What we now call the proposed Ingram River Wilderness Area was first conceptualized by the St Margaret’s Bay Stewardship Association, a charity established in 2003 to, among other things, protect this watershed feeding the St Margaret’s Bay. Originally, there wasn’t much they could do, since these acres were owned by the now defunct Bowater Mersey Paper Company and subject to routine and private harvests, but when Bowater closed in 2012, the association called on the province to purchase this abused wilderness as part of the Buy Back the Mersey movement. And it worked.

All 32,000 acres were transmogrified from private to public land, and the St Margaret’s Bay Stewardship Association proposed it become a community forest – a fundamentally more sustainable management model which would be administered by a cooperative on behalf of the community at large, but their proposal was rejected in 2013 by the provincial government.

That same year, a 170 acre clearcut, sanctioned by the province, tore through the Ingram River Wilderness just south of Panuke Lake, which came as a shock to the association as this ran contrary to the goals of Buy Back the Mersey. It was followed by several others, including a 900 acres cut in 2016. Nova Scotia had clearly decided this landscape was open for business.

So, the association changed its approach, abandoning their ambitions for a community forest and suggesting instead a provincial park. There was precedent, after all. Big St Margaret’s Bay Provincial Park and Island Lake Provincial Park, both of which would have incorporated portions of the Ingram River Wilderness, had been actively considered by the province as recently as 2007. Neither materialized, obviously, but maybe the idea could be restored and expanded.

This approach too was rejected. Any hypothetical Ingram River Provincial Park would require costs the province wasn’t eager to shoulder, so the proposal changed once more, into the Ingram River Wilderness Area, a designation which would preclude forestry, require no active management, keep the landscape open for public use, and be quite cheap.

That’s how it’s been since 2016, the St Margaret’s Bay Stewardship Association cataloguing the various ecological and recreational virtues of the proposed Ingram River Wilderness Area in order to strengthen their case, while clearcutting continued with provincial approval. In the words of Mike Lancaster, the association’s stewardship coordinator, “It does feel like we’re playing whack-a-mole with these harvests that keep coming up. We’re trying to plug holes in a boat made out of paper.”

See also: News brief: Wilderness designation of unique ecological area near Halifax reaches critical stage

He estimates 80 per cent of the proposed Ingram River Wilderness Area has been cut in the last 60 years, meaning much of the landscape is still in active recovery, but the remaining 20 per cent, the fragments of intact and mature forest slowly spreading to cover the wounds, are spectacular.

Mike himself has identified over 130 forest stands in the Ingram whose trees exceed 125 years old. Many of these exceed 200 years, and a handful exceed 300. Only three trees in all 32,000 acres have broken the 400 year threshold, rarified air for any tree in the Maritimes. The oldest of these was discovered only last year, in the late afternoon of September 27^th, on one of the ancient islands of Island Lake, a popular paddling destination. The uncertainties associated with tree coring prevented an accurate count, but Mike, who cored the tree himself, placed its age between 430-450 years, making it one of the oldest trees in the province.

And there’s more. The proposed Ingram River Wilderness Area supports provincially rare Red spruce dominant stands, contains some of the largest continuous and unprotected old growth forests in Nova Scotia, shelters one of the province’s narrowest wildlife corridors and harbours innumerable species-at-risk, not least of which the mainland moose.

The St Margaret’s Bay Stewardship Association requested a “wilderness assessment” from the relevant government departments, which would have been the first step in a series of steps to establish a proper wilderness area, and would, in a way, force a yes-or-no answer from the province. Instead they were granted a “biodiversity assessment,” a mechanism the province apparently invented on the spot, wherein government staff and members of the association collaborate on a study of the area’s biodiversity value. This is the first and last time a “biodiversity assessment” has been conducted in Nova Scotia, to Mike’s knowledge. It has no precedent and no next steps. But, it came with a logging moratorium which holds to this day, so the association accepted.

The biodiversity assessment began in January, 2019, and was followed by public consultation on the proposal itself in the fall of 2020. No results have yet been made public. And in the meantime, the promised moratorium has been…imperfect. “One of most significant old growth Red Spruce stands,” Mike has ever seen was destroyed during road construction in late 2019, which, according to the province, didn’t count. Association staff also discovered many acres of exceptional old growth east of Panuke Lake and added them to their proposal, but the province declined to include them under the moratorium, and have since proposed they be cut. Twelve parcels await the axe, 510.62 acres total, among them an Eastern hemlock 402 years old. Mike referred to these acres as, “perhaps the most ecologically significant region of the proposed [Ingram River Wilderness Area.]”

That brings us to the present day, another spectacular example of what it takes to keep forests standing in stark contrast to the orderly process of tearing them down. 

But things have changed since 2003, in those early days of scrappy conservation in the watershed of St Margaret’s Bay. The various values of the Ingram River Wilderness have been demonstrated to the satisfaction of over fifty Nova Scotian organizations and businesses now formally lending their support for the protection of these 32,000 acres. Among them are the Confederacy of Mainland Mik’maq, Tourism Industry Association of Nova Scotia, and Arch Diocese of Nova Scotia and PEI of the Anglican Church, as well as the usual suspects, like the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society and Nature Nova Scotia.

Ongoing harvests, upcoming elections and the chronic undervaluing of intact ecosystems have forged a sense of urgency along the Ingram River, but this has bred momentum which might force a decision in the coming months, demonstrating either the virtue of perseverance and public engagement, or the stifling headwind of unconscious economics. When asked about progress via email in late May, the Department of Lands and Forestry said they are, “reviewing the results of [the biodiversity assessment] and [public] consultation, and will announce any decisions that impact this region in the near future.”

As our leaders opine about percentages of protected land and the integrity of regional biodiversity, as they did later in this email, progress might yet be found in the Ingram.

Zack Metcalfe is a freelance journalist, columnist and author active across the Maritime.

See also: Weekend video: An interview with Ralph Wheadon, long time Provincial Forest Ranger

The post A stubborn proposition: Ingram River Wilderness Area fights for fruition appeared first on Nova Scotia Advocate.

KJIPUKTUK (Halifax) – Designating the Ingram River Wilderness Area near St. Margaret’s Bay will protect some of the most pristine publicly owned forests and waterways from logging and industrial activities. The 15,000 hectares are part of lands the province acquired when Bowater ran into financial difficulties in 2011. 

I am familiar with the stunningly beautiful area. I am a bit of a (very bad) birder, and I like to go for walks there, binoculars in hand. And I am not the only one. People from the area as well as residents of Halifax, which is only a half hour drive away, use the area for hiking, fishing, camping and hunting.  

“The area houses some lovely old stands that are among the oldest in the province. They’re beautiful mixed Acadian forests, with all of the attributes that we associate with a forest that is native to Nova Scotia. Areas that contain large oaks and maples Very much unlike the plantation-like spruce and fir dominated forest that comes out in response to clear cutting,” Helga Guderley, a member of the St. Margaret’s Bay Stewardship Association (SMBSA) tells me. 

Guderley mentions that some of the trees in the area, well over 400 years old,  are among the very oldest in the province. The area also contains a rare stand of eastern hemlock that has probably never been harvested with many trees over 200 years old.

After pressure by the SMBSA, former Minister Iain Rankin agreed to a temporary moratorium on harvesting while the Departments of Environment and Lands and Forestry are conducting a biodiversity assessment. But concerns about further damage will continue until the land is designated a wilderness area, says Guderley.  

“Not that many years ago, there was an absolutely massive amount of land that was listed for clearcutting, and we protested quite a bit and made a lot of noise,” Guderley says. “By making this a wilderness area, a lot of the current usage would still be allowed, but it would be protected from future harvesting, and industrial uses, quarries and things like that.” 

“Connectivity between green spaces is very important. So having this area be a green space, which is not cut down willy nilly, that’s not turned into dumps that’s not turned into an industrial zone is really important for wildlife,” Guderley says.

The designation of the IRWA will bring the area closer to the recommendations of the Lahey Report. Currently, the St. Margaret’s Bay District has only an 8 percent protection rate, while the Lahey Report calls for closer to 30 percent.

The wilderness designation process has reached the stage where an expression of broad public support for the designation may well be what is needed to convince politicians that the area warrants protection from further logging and industrial uses.

Recently the province posted an online survey to find out more about current uses of the lands. It’s important that people fill out the questionnaire to send a message that the land is worth protecting, Guderley believes.

“This survey is part of the biodiversity assessment. I think a strong community response will show that the community values this area for its biodiversity and for its natural characteristics, and for access to wilderness that we all need. So I see it as a persuasive tool,” Guderley says. 

You can find the survey here. The survey includes an ‘other comments’ section where you can express your support for the wilderness designation.

Photos used for this article are from the Protect the Ingram River Wilderness Area website and Facebook page.

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The post News brief: Wilderness designation of unique ecological area near Halifax reaches critical stage appeared first on Nova Scotia Advocate.

The Right Honourable Justin Trudeau

Office of the Prime Minister

80 Wellington Street

Ottawa, ON K1A 0A2

Cc:

Catherine McKenna, Federal Minister of the Environment and Climate Change

Jim Carr, Federal Minister of Natural Resources

Dominic LeBlanc, Federal Minister of Fisheries and Oceans

Derek Mombourquette, NS Minister of Energy and Mining

Margaret Miller, NS Minister of Environment

Stephen McNeil, Premier of NS

July 17th, 2018

RE: PUBLIC INQUIRY ON OFFSHORE DRILLING

Prime Minister Trudeau,

We are writing to you on behalf of the Offshore Alliance* to urgently call on the Federal Government, in concert with the Government of Nova Scotia, to undertake a public inquiry into the environmental, socio-economic, and other impacts of offshore oil and gas exploration in Nova Scotia’s Offshore.

The inadequacies of the current regulatory and impact assessment regime, the failure to consider the latest science (on risk assessment, dispersants, impacts of seismic, added risks of deepwater drilling, ocean acidification, and recovery of the fishery, to name a few), the poor state of public awareness and involvement and the magnitude of the risk to the marine biosphere and to the present and future economic base of Nova Scotia’s coastal communities all demand an up-to-date, thorough public re-examination. We anticipate an inquiry of this nature could take up to two years. In the meantime, there should be a moratorium on all new oil and gas activity offshore respecting the established precautionary principle.

During the federal election of 2015, your environmental platform stated “Governments grant permits but only communities grant permission.” To date public involvement in decisions regarding offshore drilling has been woefully inadequate to non-existent. Recent incidents, such as BP spilling 136,000L of Synthetic Drilling Mud (SDM), and in 2016, Shell dropping its massive riser only metres away from the well head (which remains on the ocean floor to this day), have increased public concern about the risks of offshore drilling at the depth and with the weather and typical conditions in the North Atlantic.

A public inquiry would, in an unbiased fashion, identify and examine current knowledge about the impact of oil industry activity in a marine environment such as that off the coast of Nova Scotia. That examination would provide the basis for recommendations concerning the advisability and management of oil and gas exploration and development in the offshore.

We have attached the terms of reference we propose for the inquiry. Our recommendations draw on two precedents: the Georges Bank Review Panel and the more recent NS Independent Review Panel on Hydraulic Fracturing (also known as the Wheeler review).

The Offshore Alliance is urging your government along with the Nova Scotia government to take immediate steps to establish this public inquiry into offshore oil exploration and establish a moratorium on oil and gas until such a time as the report is completed and decision-makers can benefit from its recommendations to make more informed decisions in future based on all the science.

Thank you in advance for your timely action.

Sincerely,

Peter Puxley, Campaign to Protect Offshore Nova Scotia

Gretchen Fitzgerald, Sierra Club Canada Foundation

Mark Butler, Ecology Action Centre

John Davis, Clean Ocean Action Committee

Geoff LeBoutillier, St Margaret’s Bay Stewardship Association

Angela Giles, Council of Canadians

*The Nova Scotia Offshore Alliance is a growing coalition of concerned fisher, social justice and environmental organizations, communities, and individuals determined to change the industry-captive regulatory regime which currently governs our offshore oil and gas industry. To accomplish this, we demand an immediate moratorium on all exploration and production drilling off our coasts and a full public inquiry.

See also: Open letter to the Premier.

The post Open letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau re public inquiry on offshore drilling appeared first on Nova Scotia Advocate.