Spring 2020 Newsletter
For the original Spring 2020 newsletter, click here
Happy Spring!
We hope you all are having a good spring so far despite the uncertain times we are facing. Hopefully, you’ve been able to spend more time exploring your piece of forest and pursuing some activities, which is a good form of isolation! It was great to see and talk with many of you during the western woodlot owner conference in Caledonia on March 7, before the Provincial State of Emergency began.
WWSC staff have been keeping busy despite circumstances, helping members plan and implement various woodlot activities.
Please read on for a summary of our activities and updates.
Membership Update
As of May 8th, we have reached a total membership of 201! This membership represents 61,005 acres (24,688 hectares) in Western Nova Scotia. Lunenburg and Digby Counties continue to have the highest number of members with their combined area total equating to nearly half the total membership area.
WWSC Covid-19 Procedures and Response
Since the Province of Nova Scotia declared a state of emergency on March 22, 2020 to help contain the spread of COVID-19, WWSC staff have taken a number of measures to ensure that public health directives are being followed and that the health and safety of our staff and members is the top priority during these challenging times.
Some of the measures that continue to be taken by WWSC staff include:
Postponing any indoor meetings with members to a later date. Outdoor meetings are permitted (such as at a woodlot) as long as social distancing requirements are maintained and the number of people gathering in a group is less than 5.
All field days/workshops have been postponed until further notice.
Not travelling in the same vehicle as others.
Not sharing equipment, maps or documents in the field.
Using video and phone conference calling to conduct staff and board meetings in place of in-person meetings
Management plans and other related documents have been sent digitally (via e-mail/Cloud based online services) or by post in substitution of in-person delivery.
Staff are readily available to be contacted by telephone or to set up video / screen sharing calls to review management plans and answer any other related inquiries
While these precautions are being taken, WWSC staff are still able to provide many of the woodlot management services offered prior to the onset of Covid-19 and the associated public health requirements that are now in place.
We strive to do our best to serve the needs of our membership while ensuring that provincial directives are being met and that the health and safety of our staff and members is the number one priority. The measures being followed by our staff will continually be assessed and evaluated as further information is made available by the Province of Nova Scotia. Thanks to all our members for their understanding and cooperation!
WWSC AGM
As many of you know, now is the time we typically begin advertising and preparing for our Annual General Meeting (AGM) in June.
Due to the current pandemic, and restrictions in place as part of the state of emergency, we will not be holding the WWSC AGM in June. We’ll hold this at a later date, hopefully early fall, when it is safe to do so.
We will keep you all posted on the date and location of the AGM as soon as we know more.
Market Update May 2020
The wood markets in Nova Scotia have been in a state of turmoil and uncertainty over the past few months. Following the closure of Northern Pulp, many of the sawmills in the province have been scrambling to find markets for their wood chips which is a significant portion of their revenue. Many of these mills have lowered prices or stopped buying wood while they try to work out solutions to survive. The good news is that most of these mills have started buying wood again, although at lower prices than they were paying last fall. The drop-in prices for spruce and fir ranges from approximately 7% to almost 20%, depending on the mill and product. The specifications for the wood that they buy have also become a little stricter regarding species type and minimum top size, with some mills only buying spruce and no or limited amounts of fir. This has a significant impact on the economic viability of conducting any harvesting and silviculture operations that produce spruce and fir. It is unfortunate that the price has dropped but we were faced with the possibility of having almost no markets at all for softwood over the past couple of months, so overall, it’s a welcome improvement in the market situation over what we were facing a few weeks ago. Hemlock continues to be somewhat difficult to sell with markets being limited and prices lower than spruce logs. Hardwood firewood has remained steady but the market for hardwood logs is very limited at this time. Markets for white pine remain about normal with one mill in western Nova Scotia accepting pine regularly and others accepting pine only occasionally. The market for low grade wood suitable for wood chip heating has remained steady so far, but only within Digby County.
Cultivating Balsam fir to produce Christmas trees is an option that some landowners may be interested in on their woodlots to possibly generate some extra revenue. WWSC members that are also Christmas tree growers have emphasized the demand for Nova Scotia Christmas trees is increasing and the current supply is not meeting such demand, so there may be some opportunity here. For anyone interested in more information to learn about this opportunity, contact the Christmas Tree Council of Nova Scotia (CTCNS). You can reach them by email at info@ctcns.com, or by phone at 1-855-672-2572. More information can also be found on their website at www.ctcns.com.
Harvesting
WWSC reached its’ 2019-2020-year end on March 31. The total volume sold through the Co-op during this fiscal year was 17,104 tonnes. This surpasses the total harvested volume sold that was achieved in the 2018/19 fiscal year but did not reach our goal of 20,000 tonnes for the 2019/20 fiscal year. The shortfall is primarily attributed to members being hesitant in carrying out harvesting activity due to the ongoing uncertainty of markets as well as availability of suitable contractors.
Of the total volume sold during the 2019/20 fiscal year, the main products sold were spruce logs, spruce studwood, fir studwood, pine studwood, pine logs, hemlock logs, hardwood logs, biomass wood, and some firewood.
Silviculture
For our fiscal year 2019/20, WWSC has assisted with completing a total of 292 ha (or 721 ac) of various silviculture activities which relates to a total of $171,720.27 of funding claimed from three main sources. The 3 main funding sources are the Association for Sustainable Forestry (ASF), J.A Turner & Sons Ltd., and Lewis Mouldings.
Forest Management Planning
If you’re interested in becoming more involved with forest management on your woodlot, having a management plan is a great place to start!
It is always best to have a forest management plan completed before pursuing management activities on your woodlot. This is because forest management plans provide important information such as a recent forest inventory of your woodlot, potential areas / priorities for management activities, and an appropriate set of recommendations for the entire woodlot according to your personal goals and objectives.
Currently, WWSC members receive full forest management plans at a subsidized rate, and only pay 25% of the total cost. If a full forest management plan isn’t what you require right now, we can provide a plan to fit your specific needs. Whether it is a less-detailed assessment of your woodlot, an assessment focused on a specific area within the woodlot, or guidance on management activities.
Plans can be specific to:
Road/Access planning
Recreation planning
Wildlife habitat planning
Operation/silviculture planning
Restoration planning
Additionally, there is silviculture funding available for numerous forest improvement and silviculture activities such as commercial thinning, selection management, pre-commercial thinning, planting and more, which aims to offset the cost of such activity.
If you are interested in having a management plan or an assessment of a specific area completed on your woodlot, or if you are interested in taking advantage of silviculture funding forest improvement that is available, now is the time to do it!
Contact WWSC staff to discuss your options:
Email: info@westernwoodlotcoop.com
Phone: (902)-523-2141
WWSC Avenza Workshop
On February 29th WWSC held a successful workshop lead by staff forester, Cara Gillis, in Annapolis County on the topic of Avenza Maps. Avenza Maps is a free app available for iOS or Android smartphone users. It tracks your location using your phone’s built-in GPS, even if you are far from cell reception, allowing you to navigate and collect data even when you are in the most remote places!
Avenza Maps is a great tool for woodlot owners to help them navigate and track work on their own woodlots. This has become widely used by recreational and professional users alike. Some of the everyday uses of Avenza Maps are:
Woodlot Navigation
Travelling
Recreation (hiking, paddling, hunting)
Marking fishing/hunting locations
Delineating forest stands
Search and Rescue
During our workshop, attendees learned how to download and add maps into the app, how to navigate, and how Avenza can be used to aid in woodlot management. After spending a couple of hours indoors learning about the app, we went outside to start practicing using some of these tools. Despite the chilly weather, it was nice to get out and stretch and see how the app works while on the move!
If you would like to learn more about this app, or would be interested in attending one of these workshops in the future, contact Cara by emailing:
Nova Scotia Forest Market
The NS Forest Market website (www.nsforestmarket.ca) is available to WWSC members to buy and sell materials from the forest or finished wood products. Developed by our colleagues at the Mersey Tobeatic Research Institute (MTRI), the NS Forest Market is a free online community where you can buy, sell or trade timber or non-timber forest products from our local woods, increasing the value of items you might otherwise not have found a use for. These items include anything from the forest- medicinal herbs or food items, burls, live edge boards, raw logs, or finished wood products.
Abby Lewis from MTRI is available to help with posting your products or making your account as a vendor.
Try it yourself on the NS Forest Market site, or email the following to Abby.Lewis@merseytobeatic.ca:
product photos
full description of the item
where it comes from
how much you’re asking for it
how an interested buyer can contact you
Due to COVID19 restrictions, we and MTRI ask that any exchanges are carried out in a safe and distanced manner. Please observe healthy and hygienic practices to ensure you don’t exchange anything more than wood products!
Windfall Mitigation
Wind is the most prevalent natural disturbance agent in the Acadian Forest and plays a very important role in influencing the composition and structure of the forest. While windthrow is a natural process and contributes to coarse woody debris and wildlife habitat, a large amount of windthrow sustained in a concentrated area may be of concern to landowners for economic and aesthetic reasons. While it is impossible to eliminate a natural process such as windthrow from occurring entirely, it may be possible to mitigate excessive blowdown by assessing hazards prior to implementing harvesting and other forest management related activities.
Windthrow hazard is assessed by forest professionals while conducting a Pre-treatment Assessment (PTA) of a potential working area. All landowners benefit from understanding some of the factors that influence windthrow hazards on their woodlots.
To read more on these factors and some considerations to mitigate windthrow risk, please see the following article here
Hemlock Woolly Adelgid (HWA)- Management strategies
HWA is an invasive, aphid-like, sap sucking insect found at the base on hemlock needles which attacks and eventually kills hemlock trees dependent on population levels. It has few natural predators and can grow significantly during the late fall and early spring when hemlocks produce abundant quantities of sugar and amino acids. HWA was identified in 2017 in southwest areas of Nova Scotia and a quarantine zone has been applied to the 5 western counties.
Woodlot owners with hemlock groves and/or mixed forests with a composition of hemlock are faced with a management dilemma since HWA threatens the long-term existence of this ecologically important species in terms of the unique environment it creates for wildlife and other organisms, societal and recreational benefits, and for overall ecosystem health. For woodlot owners whose objectives are mainly focused on ecosystem health and biodiversity, it is a reasonable goal to investigate
and consider available management strategies to maintain hemlock composition in perpetuity for our next generation of society.
To read about HWA Management Strategies, please see the following article here
For more information about HWA in Canada, visit the Canada Food Inspection Agency website via this link:
Closing Remarks
Please contact WWSC Staff if you are interested in finding out more information about management plans, are interested in learning more about the services we offer, and/or to find out more about any of the components included in this newsletter.
Despite these challenging times, we want to continue to serve our members,
and we hope to see or talk to you soon!
Until then, be safe and well.
-WWSC Staff-