Conservation and Travel Journalist
Hemlock Woolly Adelgid – the invasive aphid-like insect noted for its destruction of Eastern hemlocks throughout the eastern United States – was discovered in Kejimkujik National Park in August of 2018, and now Parks Canada is doing something about it.
Continue reading “In the Way of Solutions: Keji Receives $1.4 Million to Combat HWA”
I found my first Ram’s Head Lady Slipper while on hands and knees along an obscure walking trail in Hants County, Nova Scotia, its delicate purple flower, no larger than my fingernail, now the focal point of a groundbreaking lawsuit in the provincial capital.
Legislation dedicated to the protection of species-at-risk is relatively new to Canada. Our federal Species-At-Risk Act (SARA), only came into force in 2002. Recognizing the need for complimentary legislation several provinces established their own, some after, like Ontario’s 2007 Endangered Species Act, and others before, like Nova Scotia’s 1999 Endangered Species Act, among the first in Canada. But, as the decades rolled by, these various acts have proven flimsy, while federal and provincial governments alike leave them unenforced.
Point Pelee has always been unique among Canada’s national parks. It was the first to be established for primarily conservation purposes in 1918, its importance to the migratory songbirds of North America made evident by local ornithologist Jack Miner and others. Because it jutted so far south into Lake Erie from southern Ontario, it offered birds flying north their first opportunity to make landfall in Canada, sharing unorthodox company on this 15 square kilometre spit of land for a few weeks before scattering across the Canadian north.
Joel Salatin of Polyface Farm, Virginia, was featured in both the New York Times bestseller The Omnivores Dilemma and the documentary Food Inc. for his farm’s unique and holistic management, servicing more than 5,000 families, 50 restaurants, 10 retail outlets and a farmer’s market with organic beef, pork, poultry and forestry products. What’s more, he’s published 12 books.
The question has been asked – where is the organic industry of Atlantic Canada headed? – in particular by stakeholders pining for a formal plan. At Charlottetown’s ACORN (Atlantic Canadian Organic Regional Network) Conference in late November of 2018, it was put more directly.
Wilderness areas have been a reality in Nova Scotia since December 3rd, 1998, when the Wilderness Areas Protection Act came into force and simultaneously designated the first 31. These areas, unlike parks which can be partially dedicated to recreation, are strictly for conservation on the ecosystem scale, protecting entire landscapes and the vital processes therein.
Continue reading “The 13 Per Cent: NGOs Call For Fulfillment of Nova Scotian Protected Areas”
The Eastern hemlock is a force of nature in Nova Scotia by virtue of its age. Foresters past and present have ignored it in favour of more valuable spruce, pine and myriad hardwoods, allowing hemlocks to become the oldest member of our enduring forests, accounting for almost all of our remaining old growth.
Continue reading “Hemlocks in Crisis: Agencies Mobilize in Defence of Iconic Tree”
I was caught off guard recently when someone assured me that invasive species are no big deal; that, when it comes to the mass extinction we humans are driving forth, taking a couple thousand species from one unique ecosystem and plunking them in another won’t matter much in the long run.
There are precious few old growth forests left in the Maritimes, mere postage stamps surrounded by oceans of abused wilderness, altogether constituting less than 0.01 per cent of our regional landscape.
Continue reading “A Treasure By Any Other Name: Lessons Learned in Maritime Old Growth Forests”