Email says province 'serious about reducing the amount of clear cutting where possible'
While officials with the province are saying little publicly about their plans for recommendations from a review on forestry practices, work behind the scenes has already started to reduce the amount of clear cutting on Crown land.
Lands and Forestry Minister Iain Rankin said in an interview last week the government accepts "the premise that we could do more for ecological-based forestry," but he wasn't prepared to say what recommendations he would move on from the report released last month by Bill Lahey.
But a department email on Sept. 11 to major players in the industry, which CBC News obtained, shows directions are already going out that will see reductions in clear cutting.
"For the time being, all forest management keys that direct you to non-clearcut treatments should be followed," Allan Smith, the province's director of resource management writes.
Smith writes that "development of revised forest management guides and prescriptions are a priority but will take time," but he also cautions that "the department is serious about reducing the amount of clear cutting where possible, and by increasing retention within areas prescribed for clear cut."
The email goes on to list six things that are to start now.
"Stands comprised primarily of tolerant species cannot be clear cut except in exceptional circumstances (i.e. salvage). Unacceptable growing stock is to no longer be a determining factor in prescribing a clear cut."
Clearcuts must be justified
Smith writes that people should be "looking for opportunities to partial harvest or to leave 10-30 per cent on site where species and stand conditions allow."
He also instructs that retention trees are not to be clumped in a harvest area.
When a clearcut is "the only reasonable" option, the department is to receive "a good description of the stand features for justification."
In an effort to increase biodiversity, Smith instructs that "patches of smaller, or immature wood within a stand should no longer be harvested simply for the sake of convenience and to clean up the site."
"We should be looking for ways to increase the post-harvest heterogeneity of harvest areas. Unmerchantable sized tolerant and intermediate species are to be retained whenever possible."
A 100-metre buffer
In what is a step that would address a major concern the public has voiced about some clearcuts, Smith writes that "there shall be a 100-metre setback [buffer] between any clear cut treatment" and any of the province's protected areas, candidates for protected designation, national parks and Nature Conservancy lands.
"All other treatments can go up to protected areas boundaries," he writes.
Smith also encourages recipients of the email to familiarize themselves with the portion of the Lahey report that discusses irregular shelterwood harvesting, a process that's less ecologically-intensive than clear cutting and allows new trees to become established before mature ones are cut.
Considering shelterwood harvesting
"The department will be reviewing this over the next few weeks to better understand and describe what this treatment looks like, and you should be able to discuss the possibility of this option with Crown foresters in the future."
Recipients of the email included representatives for Northern Pulp, Port Hawkesbury Paper, Great Northern Timber, Westfor Management Inc., Taylor Lumber and the Medway Community Forest Cooperative.
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