THE NOVA SCOTIA WORKING WOODLANDS TRUST ENVISIONS A HEALTHY, RESILIENT FORESTED LANDSCAPE ACROSS NOVA SCOTIA THROUGH A NETWORK OF LANDOWNERS WITH A SHARED COMMITMENT TO LONG-TERM STEWARDSHIP.
The NSWWT is a project facilitated by the Medway Community Forest Cooperative, Nova Scotia’s first Crown-land, community-governed licensee. But the NSWWT has nothing to do with Crown land. Since the inauguration of the MCFC in 2015, we’ve always aimed to help provide management services to private woodlot owners, just hadn’t quite found our niche.
Through our partnership with the Western Woodlot Service Coop, and talking to private woodlot owners in our region, we found a clear gap in services – a mechanism to protect working woodlands. The majority of Nova Scotia woodlot owners are aging, and often don’t have a clear intergenerational path to pass their lands on, or their children have moved away and don’t have an interest in woodlot management. The saddest part is often these woodlot owners who have carefully tended their lands for generations are often forced to sell their properties to the highest bidder. Many times, the buyers liquidate these woodlots, ruining the original owner’s stewardship legacy.
By building the structure to place private working forests under easement through the Nova Scotia Community Easement Act, we can allow woodlot owners to continue to economically benefit from their woodlands without comprising their ecological integrity. Every woodlot we place under easement will be required to work under the conditions of a forest management specific to their property. The plan will be generated based on the woodlot owner’s objectives, but will not allow practices that do not follow to principles of ecological forestry.
Another aspect of this work is providing access to carbon markets. Carbon has become a bit of a pie-in-the-sky idea in NS, but we are working with a carbon developer who is ready to purchase our forest carbon credits now. All we need is to develop a pool of landowners that collectively own 10,000 acres - a small fraction of private woodlots in Southwestern NS. Carbon is a key piece to this puzzle as it will cover the expense of monitoring easement properties in perpetuity, and also provide financial benefit to the woodlot owner.
Our aim is to prevent the mass liquidation of Nova Scotia woodlots. We won’t be able to save every parcel, but each property we place under easement will help build forest assets of our rural communities and ensure they are able to provide for Nova Scotia families for generations to come. Our mission is simple, we want to uphold the long-term stewardship of family working woodlands in Nova Scotia, through ecological forestry and conservation.
There are a lot of steps to this process and we’re learning with you as we grow, but we think this reflects a huge opportunity to woodlot stewards across Nova Scotia. We hope you’ll consider an easement with the NSWWT to help uphold your stewardship legacy.