The message: Stop the cut in moose habitat

The mighty mainland moose was probably meandering through forested areas of Digby County on Wednesday, Nov. 24, but the fate of the species and that of its wooded habitat were top of mind in downtown Halifax.

“We’re here trying to get the cut stopped in Rocky Point Lake,” Nina Newington, a member of Extinction Rebellion in Nova Scotia, said at a rally in front of the Hollis Street offices of the provincial Natural Resources and Renewables office.

“I’ve been up there. They are making a complete, devastating mess out of it. We know it’s moose habitat and government should be maintaining its own law to protect endangered species,” Newington said, as some 40 people rallied in the near-freezing temperatures and light snow to stick up for the mainland moose.

“Instead, (the government) are giving the industrial forestry what they want again, and if this government doesn’t want to start off on a bad environmental foot, this would be a really good place to stop," she said. "They should just stop the cut, start protecting the moose."

She noted there is a way to do this. In 2012, the wildlife division put out a list of moose concentration areas and she said the government could put all of those areas under consideration for protection.

Protesters carried signs and chanted, while some, dressed as moose, laid on the sidewalk to represent dead moose. Others ventured into the building to try to find the office of Tory Rushton, the minister of natural resources and renewables.

The previous week Rushton was asked about cutting in the Rocky

Point Lake area of Digby County.

“There was an application several years ago that was approved through the proper check-boxes,” the minister said.

Rushton said department staff are monitoring the cut and have been in touch with the workers. Rushton said the cut falls under the special management process for moose habitat.

“At the end of the day, we need to be focused on the fact that we are moving ahead with the recommendations of the Lahey report and a lot of what’s taking place in that area would fall in with some of these guidelines we are steadily moving toward.”

Rushton said his department has been receiving “a fair amount of emails and response” to the cut there. “Let’s not forget that this is a process that went through all the check-boxes prior to harvesting even starting last year and that includes public consultation through media, it includes Mi’kmaw consultation.”

In a news release in anticipation of the rally, WestFor, the management company that contracts out the forestry operations, said the cut in the

Rocky Point Lake area is a “fully approved and supervised partial harvest” that has been planned for three years, taking into consideration all environmental and wildlife factors.

“We are pleased with the harvest that is underway,” said Breck Stuart, general manager for WestFor. “It is a model for future forestry activity.”

WestFor says the Rocky Point Lake harvest gained approval from forestry experts and wildlife biologists at the Natural Resources Department, in conjunction with Nova Scotia’s Mainland Moose Recovery Team, which has developed a special management plan for the cut.

Key mandatory components of that plan include creating or maintaining ample shaded cover in both softwood and mixed wood forest types, limiting fragmentation by maintaining or creating continuous networks of canopy cover and opening up the forest canopy to allow sunlight to reach the forest floor to promote regeneration of seedlings for moose to eat.

“This is not a clearcut by any objective measure,” WestFor said, arguing that a harvest of 40 per cent of trees is occurring on that particular Rocky Point Lake site, with 60 per cent of the trees remaining standing.

The opposition to cutting and clearcutting in moose inhabited areas has resulted in rallies and blockades for more than the past year.

On Dec. 16 of last year, nine members of the Extinction Rebellion-led group that had been blockading access roads to WestFor logging operations in the same area of Digby County for nearly two months were arrested by the RCMP.

WestFor had applied to the Nova Scotia Supreme Court for a temporary injunction to remove the forestry protectors from the two encampments near New France in Digby County.

Newington, one of the nine arrested, said during the rally that the newly elected PC government has promised to protect 20 per cent of the land in Nova Scotia and a good place to start would be to protect all moose habitat.

“They’ve got the map, that would cover Rocky Point Lake and some other areas,” she said. “If it went under consideration for protection, that would stop road building and harvesting of any kind. For all of Crown land, we’re asking for a moratorium on clearcutting until Lahey is implemented. They (government) are going to try to protect 330,000 hectares of land in Nova Scotia, most of that is going to be Crown land.”

Newington said existing harvesting approvals issued in moose habitat should never have been issued and should be cancelled.

“They (approvals) were issued on the basis that the special management plan for moose was adequate and it is grossly inadequate,” she said. “Before they have any right to put out those approvals, they have an obligation to protect endangered species and they haven’t been doing that.”