With the province implementing many of the Lahey report’s recommendations for cutting on Crown land, the available fibre easily accessible to industry is set to go down.
That is unless the industry is able to access more wood from private land.
While the Department of Lands and Forestry has run programs for years meant to encourage private woodlot owners to actively manage their properties, they have had only moderate success.
Now an association of private woodlot owners has come forward with a pitch to the province that it claims will not only make more wood available to industry, but also lead to the Lahey report’s recommendations being implemented on non-Crown lands as well.
“The existing woodlot program provides landowners with the necessary tools to voluntarily implement their objectives through sustainable forest treatments, managing for all values with independent guidance and quality assurance,” reads the pitch from The Nova Scotia Landowners and Forest Fibre Producers Association.
“The following strategy outlines how to implement the current system to scale for all woodlot owners in Nova Scotia, thereby achieving or becoming the avenue to achieve all recommendations from the Independent Review on Forestry pertaining to private lands.”
The association’s pitch would see all woodlot owners in the province be able to register their properties on a website which it has built but hasn’t gone live with yet, that would work as a central hub for the entire industry.
The site, Mywoodlot.ca, would be fed information on each woodlot created during a site visit from a forester. It would also include a custom management plan based on the values of the woodlot owners.
Certain values in line with the Lahey report recommendations would be encouraged through favourable access to silviculture funding. Woodlot owners would get a property tax break for actively managing their woodlots to supply the province’s forest industry.
As well, the site anticipates the creation of the selling of carbon offsets to industry through the cap and trade system for carbon being implemented in Nova Scotia. This would allow woodlot owners a new revenue stream.
“This is a bottom up approach to meeting the goals outlined in the Lahey report on private land,” said Kingsley Brown, association president, on Sunday.
The Department of Lands and Forestry confirmed Monday that it had received the pitch and was considering it.
“Their proposal will be reviewed and, at this point, no decisions have been made,” said Department spokesman Bruce Nunn.
“The department supports small private woodlot owners across Nova Scotia with silviculture and programs to help them better manage their woodlots. “
