Natural Resources Minister Mike Holland recently played host to his counterparts across the country for the annual meeting of the Canadian Council of Forest Ministers in St. Andrews.
The group met in-person for the first time in three years to discuss shared priorities, common challenges and emerging opportunities in Canada’s forest sector.
With the wildfire season already well underway in the West, Holland said a lot of work on wildfire mitigation has been done in recent months by various subcommittees of the council.
“In an effort to bring forward plans and predictions and general outlooks as it relates to wildfires, not only predictive models but also mitigation techniques that we can use and also collaborations that we will have with our federal partners.”
Holland noted the ministers talked about how jurisdictions must balance the protection of land with industry.
“To protect and preserve land and how we do it in a balanced fashion so that we can see our conservation efforts move forward while at the same time continue to have a thriving forestry industry as well.”
In December, Holland announced how the province would double its conservation of Crown lands or about 278,000 hectares for a total protected area of 10 percent.
Holland added First Nations representatives were included in the discussions and any topic involving forestry had an Indigenous component.
In the wake of the two-day conference, New Brunswick conservation groups are calling for a significant reduction in clear-cuts, elimination of glyphosate-based herbicides in forests, legislated targets for increasing selective cutting, new protected areas to safeguard wildlife habitat, and greater fairness and opportunity for private woodlots owners and Indigenous communities.
The groups said these steps would go a long way toward addressing the failures of New Brunswick’s current, old-fashioned and big industry-favored approach to Crown forest management.
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