The BLT and SMBARTA rails to trails are closed. Apparently there were some questions about whether these kinds of trails were included.The COLTA is a city park/trail so it is closed too.
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Thats exactly why. It was same reason they didnt want peoppe ij the woods durint the covid lockdowns. Cant have the added strain ehs is maxed out as is
I think it is just that if more people are in the woods there is more chance of fire. Any reasoning and rationalization beyond that opens too much of a can of worms to make public policy so they just ban it outright.
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This is from May 29th. The fire has gotten larger since then. This same satellite has captured smoke from Canadian wildfires as far away as Northern Europe.
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A little counter rant�
Do we know for sure it was a person burning or are we just speculating? Specific to the Halifax area fire the investigation says, âlikely human activityâ which could mean someone started it, or maybe it means someone got carless with a smoke or joint, maybe an OHV without a spark arrestor, or maybe dumping.
What I do know is that we can try to point at a single individual but the real issue is how we have been treating our forested areas over the last 100 or so years. There is the dumping I see along every trail and back road. I know it sounds far fetched, but dumping contributes to fires in a number of ways; beit in how some materials can focus light to how some materials can hold heat until they combust, or exothermic reactions when dumped chemicals intermix or leach out of man made materials.
As for the bans, it is typical of NS to act too little too late; I seen it with COVID and here we are now. The bans might have had an impact a few weeks ago but now, just before my area got 2 days of rain with a few more on the way. It all seems too little too late. It also doesnât seem to really take into consideration what and where the risks are, so it feels a bit lazy; but forgivable.
Until you think about it for a bit, then it all starts to feel a bit disingenuous. The amount of forest that has been clear cut leaving behind a barren dry waste which has been proven to increase the chances of forest fires. Even when private land owners were banned from operating OHVs in the woods I still seen trucks running logs out of woodlots and could hear the saws and equipment running. When Transportation clears the road side with machines that leave a mess of dead and dying entangled trees and limbs scattered along the highway sides as oppose to a more controlled means of clearing the roads for sighting and safety.
At the end of the day, this is going to be our norm if we donât start pushing for better forestry management that is proactive as oppose to reactive; and casual uses and users will always be the first to loose access.
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If you knew anything about forestry, youâd be singing a different tune. Lol
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A different tune? You mean not advocating for better forestry management practices? Do you think what we have been doing isnât a problem because I personally know better from working in the woods on a woodlot that has been in our family three generations. Mismanagement and dumping, aside from climate change, are significant factors in what allows fires to get out of control. There are numerous studies on this all over the US and Canada. Are you telling me that the government needs to be less proactive and more reactive? Because reaction isnât making things better, we need to make decisions that increase biodiversity and provide better hydration capture in soils to make more fire resilient forests; not waiting for a problem and then trying to resolve it. This also swings back to commercial practices, but it all gets complicated.
Do you think it is ok to have a ban that excludes commercial activity? Because, equipment failures are the number 1 cause of forest fires and commercial activity uses a lot of equipment. Equipment that burns fuel and gets hot⌠Seems reasonable to me that commercial activity should be the first thing to stop.
I honestly donât understand how my âtuneâ offends your sensibilities because Iâm not saying anything that hasnât been already said by science. Excepts for how the government seems to operate, I truly believe NS was slow and cumbersome; didnât do enough when it might have mattered then did it all too little too late and it isnât the first time.
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When done right, forestry is tree farming. From where I come from this is also a forest fire prevention strategy. When you go in and clear cut not only are you taking a highly flammable tree stand out of the forest you are also creating animal habitat.
Clear cuts take those mature tree stands of merchantable wood out of the forests taking away tones of compostable materials that forest fires love. Iâve worked from a one tree reserve on lakes and waterways to a 120m privacy boundary. The one meter reserve was a test situation for run off to see the effects streams as badly as studied due to fauna issues. The regular 30m reserve was to leave a barrier of forest to absorbe the run off however this poses a problem for beavers as they have to walk that 30m to find poplar and birch as most waterways are lined with conifers. This exposes them more to predators.
Clear cuts are in some peopleâs eyes is seen as habitat destruction however it also creates habitats for the fauna. The first trees that typically regenerate naturally and the quickest are poplar and birch. All these types of budding trees are a primary source for moose. These cuts provide safe feeding grounds for them as they are able to graze in the open without fear of predators. Most cuts are required to also retain 10% of the residual tree stand for perching birds.
So if we just leave these majestic mature forests around us, our houses and infrastructure we are leaving ourselves open and fires of this nature will be the norm.
Iâm from Northern Ontario, more trees there than the maritimes combined. And there has NEVER been any kind of province wide ban on going into the forests. Localized bans in immediate areas where active fires are yes but not province wide.
And as an aside, has anyone else questioned the attention the Tantallon fire has gotten or should I say little. Typically if you have a forest fire at the door step of the biggest city in your province you get all hands on deck specially for air support. That fire would have been controlled before the heat on Thursday had they gotten all the bombers in the maritimes to come down on it. Not just a few choppers and one bomber from NL. The response is almost laughable from the air.
And this lockdown is just another infringement of our rights. One guy is an idiot and we ALL suffer. Lol
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All we get after a clearcut is shitty spindly alders.
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via Nova Scotia Government Facebook Page:
The Province is lifting restrictions on travel and activities in the woods in all areas except for Shelburne County and anywhere evacuation orders are in place, effective 12:01 a.m., Monday, June 5.
âWe know that using our woods and trails are important to many Nova Scotiansâ physical and mental health,â said Tory Rushton, Minister of Natural Resources and Renewables. âThanks to the weather, conditions have improved in the province, but we still need be cautious. We are keeping the burn ban in place and asking people to continue to be responsible while enjoying the outdoors.â
Activities that are now permitted include hiking, camping, fishing and the use of vehicles in the woods. The provincewide burn ban is still in place. The fine for violating the ban is $25,000.
Evacuation orders are still in place. People are asked to remain away from all wildfire areas.
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Your comments on clear cutting are counter to everything I have read and observed and learned in my academic career. I personally have never seen clear cutting leave a pristine habitat for new vegetation. On the contrary, what is left behind is brush and root systems that dry out and become the very combustible material that you say is being removed from the forest that feeds forest fires. Clear cut areas erode faster because the root systems that hold it together die out, and the erosion exposes yet more flammable material. Without the tree canopy to protect soils the soil looses moisture more quickly to evaporation which creates dryer conditions that help forest fires start and take hold; it also makes it harder for new vegetation to take root. With this riparian zones, if one is even left in a clear cut, cannot effectively hold back the sediments which then get washed into streams and rivers damaging fish and aquatic habitat. If the riparian zones are completely removed you end up with bank erosion that can lead to streams and tributaries widening that cause other issues like sedimentation. With that, snow melts faster and rain waters move more quickly overland causing more issues for water ways and the habitat as a whole and less water gets absorbed into the soils again making it harder for vegetation to take hold; the same living healthy vegetation that helps protect soils from drying out is key in retaining water that helps forests be more fire resilient. Iâm having a hard time reconciling your tree farming practices and findings into what we see happening in natural stand forests.
Additionally, we have one of the few old growth Acadian and Tobeatic forests that we are trying to protect and conserve. According to your management practices we need to clear cut it to remove the merchantable wood that is the fuel for forest fires? This doesnât seem like the right approach in terms of conservation.
Also, good forest management isnât âtree farmingâ, forest management is a little bit of resource management, a little bit of conservation, and a lot of balancing the needs to citizens and interest groups. Tree farming, is a corporate operation for profit; not a âbest practicesâ for forest management. To that tree farming practices were implemented in NS as part of the forestry management and what I recall coming from that was that single species planting created poor habitats for wildlife and vegetation.
That aside, part of NSâs inaction in this also goes back to how we have under funded or fire response services and forestry services. We use to operate 1 fire watch tower for every 120Ha of forest, that is now down to 1 tower for every 330Ha. Due to complacency and a lack of funding our leaders have eroded our ability to respond to fires as quickly as well as moved to rely far too much on volunteers. In the âage of informationâ there is less timely information because there is less people watching and reporting. Our leaders consistently ignore the warning signs then act too little too late; on top of our eroded social services that can no longer be relied on to respond in a crisis. NS is seeing the candle burn at both ends, on one side climate change creating more dangerous conditions and the other side inaction and under funding of the services that we rely on for information, protection, and care. If you look at how COVID unfolded, and to some extent the events of the recent shooting, there are disturbing parallels in how our provincial government fails to act in time. All again linked to poor funding and management of the social services and institutions.
As for âAnd this lockdown is just another infringement of our rightsâ, I might think the lock down was both too little too late and targeting the wrong people but there is nothing I could find in the charter or the constitution to support an infringement on your rights.
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Welcome to Nova Scotia.
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Yep, all of the clearcuts I go by are abandoned and just scream fire hazard. About two years after harvest the shit trees have completely taken over and shut out any sunlight from reaching other vegetation down below.
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Canât speak to forest management, but I check FlightRadar24 regularly to see whatâs flying around NS.
There were 3 helicopters working the Tantallon fire last week, plus 3 working the Shelburne fire. I think two water bombers from NL working the Tantallon fire. I donât know how many water bombers from NB working Shelburne, but you could see a train of them shuttling back and forth to Fredericton. Plus there may have been some high level aircraft monitoring and controlling the water bombers. A lot of air traffic in small air space. To me, it doesnât seem like nothing to me. Also consider that the other provinces need to have resources on hand to respond to their own emergencies, and limited aircrew with appropriate training, crew rest and aircraft maintenance cycles, etc.
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This is correct. I studied this and experienced the best remaining un-managed forests we have. After you walk through a real old growth forest such as the islands on North Bingay Lake, Sporting Lake and are area around Dennis Boot Lake, you realize why they are so special, and resistant to fires.
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The tree farmed area of PEI, I think itâs winter river or maybe Dromore; anyway as you walk one side is natural regrowth and the other is planted single species all in perfect rows and spaced X metres apart. When the trail goes through it is creepy, like hiking through catacombs; there is nothing to break up the monotonous flow of trees folding into one another out of the corner of your eye. Itâs so unnatural it is unsettling; and it took a while to realize why I didnât like walking through that part of the forest.
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You know most of the companies in forestry sent most of there equipment down to Barrington to help stop the fire right. To make fire brakes at no charge so stop blaming this on them
I donât think that is how it works.
Also, I donât think anyone is directly blaming any one specific group or cause, just throwing facts and information about, really.
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I personally blame the individual who started the actual fire.
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A good place to begin.
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