Media Clipping — Thursday, December 13, 2001, The Daily News, Halifax

I was speaking for myself

Letters to the editor

To the editor:

Stephen Bornais had a difficult task to summarize our two-hour interview for his story about GPI Atlantic's recent forestry-industry audit (Critic: No Science in Forestry Report, The Daily News, Dec. 12). As a result he picked only my more passionate statements.

Bornais mentioned my role as chairman of Nova Forest Alliance. This critique is my own. I emphasize that the staff and partners of NFA have not been consulted.

Let me illustrate my no-science comment. Some of GPI's arguments involve extending the Windhorse farm example (55 hectares) to 1.3 million hectares of forest (which is half of the province's operable forest). Since Windhorse farm uses two horses, this extrapolation would result in 47,272 horses working in the woods of Nova Scotia. This conclusion is silly, but it is the type of extrapolation behind GPI's conclusions.

Many of us in university, industry, government, environmental and community groups have been working hard to develop practical ideas for sustainable management of Nova Scotia's Acadian forests using the Canadian Council of Forest Ministers framework as our guide. Much remains to be done, but we are making progress.

Belief in unattainable economics and a forest as if Europeans had never settled here do not help with the difficult tradeoffs required for today's Nova Scotia.

Eldon Gunn
Dartmouth

Copyright © 2001, The Daily News