A review of the 2014 Forest Management Strategy calls for an increase of 150,000 hectares to Crown land conservation areas over five years.
It also identifies areas needing improvement, including long-term conservation of forest biodiversity and respecting the rights and developing the interests of First Nations.
Bill Richards of the Southern New Brunswick Forest Products Marketing Board said he remembers growing up in Kings County, when you always heard a chainsaw going and you would see local people hauling wood to the mills.
“You don’t hear much of that activity going on, the industry is becoming more concentrated in larger operations that work so-called efficiently,” Richards said, “and what that ‘code word’ kind of means, in my mind, is that there is much more clearcutting going on, for example.”
Richards found the review did not have a lot of specifics.
