Borealization of New Brunswick’s forest revisited

In 2018, a forestry industry/academia dustup occurred after a CBC interview with University of New Brunswick forestry professor Tom Beckley. Beckley referred to “borealization” of New Brunswick’s forests caused by industrial forestry practices, some private woodlot management practices, and government policy.

“Borealization” implies a conversion of traditional mixed-wood Acadian forests of the Maritime provinces and New England, into the softwood dominated boreal forests of more northerly climes. In 2018, forest industry officials at J.D. Irving questioned the use of what they considered “non-scientific terminology” by an academic, who in their estimation should have known better.

Phones rang in the hallowed halls of UNB Forestry Faculty. What ensued was a spirited scientific debate and defense of the use of the term “borealization” in a peer-reviewed article by Josh Noseworthy and Tom Beckley. The issue raised questions about industry attempts to interfere with academic freedom.

The whole affair was later documented in a 2020 article in the Halifax Examiner, written by investigative reporter Joan Baxter. The geographical shifting of the boreal forest type nationally in reaction to climate change has more recently been explored by the CBC Program Quirks and Quarks.

Given that any deliberately induced “borealization” of the Acadian forest arguably amounts to “forest stand conversion” with implications for forest harvest certification, it is curious how little empirically-based quantitative research has emanated from UNB Forestry or New Brunswick’s Department of Natural Resources and Energy Development, before or since 2018, to substantiate or refute the contention of past and ongoing conversion of New Brunswick’s Acadian forests.

In recent years, the investigation of any aspect of New Brunswick’s forest management has been severely compromised by the cessation of annual reporting on the “State of the Forest” by the province.

In light of the recent announcement of a new provincial forest management strategy by Mike Holland, Minister of Natural Resources and Energy Development, this history of debate about  “borealization” is particularly poignant.

In his revised strategy, Holland very succinctly summarized the province’s false hope and belief in a bogus dichotomy with respect to forest management when he stated, “We can do more, by looking for innovative ways to simultaneously improve conservation outcomes and society’s interests.” Presumably, this misguided mindset, implicitly pitting “conservation outcomes” against “society’s interests,” justifies isolating some diverse ecological areas in small, protected areas while providing free rein on profit driven exploitation and ecological conversion of the rest of the province.

The New Brunswick strategy stands in stark contrast to the recent conclusions contained in Nova Scotia’s framework for a new paradigm of forest management. The document was assembled in 2018 by William Lahey, President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of King’s College, after extensive consultation with a vast spectrum of forest stakeholders and experts from Nova Scotia, B.C., Ontario and Maine (but notably not from New Brunswick). Lahey concluded that “protecting and enhancing ecosystems should be the objective (the outcome) of how we balance environmental, social, and economic objectives and values in practicing forestry in Nova Scotia. A number of reasons are given for this conclusion, but the primary reason is that ecosystems and biodiversity are the foundation on which the other values, including the economic ones, ultimately depend.”

The 2007 Department of Natural Resources document, “An Ecological Land Classification System for New Brunswick, clearly articulated and mapped the naturally occurring and ecologically diverse eco-regions and eco-districts of New Brunswick. In 2010, a peer-reviewed article in the Canadian Journal of Forest Research documented how planned increases in planted softwood stands in New Brunswick would result in ecological change in those naturally occurring eco-regions on a scale comparable to the scale of difference between existing boundaries. The province’s 2014 Forest Management Plan ensured that those increases in softwood plantations would be implemented. As documented below, those predicted ecological changes have been, and are occurring.

Fast forward now to 2024, when climate change is itself inducing changes to the ecological landscape, it is imperative that the province’s forest strategy should reflect an understanding of how human-induced borealization or other forest conversions fit into the ecologic and economic picture.

Despite the province’s lack of transparency, some data do exist to provide a basis for quantitatively tracking the dynamic change in the forested landscape. The province maintains an extensive database of thousands of “Permanent Sample Plots” that are periodically sampled for their vegetative composition. These plots were used extensively in the determination of the New Brunswick Ecological Land Classification eco-divisions, and have been utilized in studies by scientists investigating the response of the province’s vegetation to the environment. The sample plots continue to be monitored, providing a basis for comparing pre-1995 forests with forests post-1995.

Data from the Permanent Sample Plots confirm that there has been an overall change in the vegetative profile of New Brunswick’s corporate leased Crown forests over the time period pre-1995 to post-1995. Crown forests are government controlled lands of unceded territory of the Wolastoqiyik, Mi’kmaq and Peskotomuhkati , comprising 51 per cent of New Brunswick woodlands. The plots in Figure 1 below demonstrate graphically that over the pre/post 1995 time periods, there has been a shift in forest composition toward increased dominance of softwoods such as black spruce, red spruce, white spruce and balsam fir (from 58 per cent to 66 per cent) at the expense of shade tolerant hardwoods such as sugar maple, yellow birch, red maple and beech (28 per cent decreased to 19 per cent). The occurrence of intolerant hardwood species such as aspens and poplars has remained fairly constant around 15 per cent, but there has been a major shift in their geographic distribution, moving from a high concentration along the densely populated Northumberland Coast to a concentration in the less populated forested areas of the Northwest of the province.

Figure 1. Distribution of the percentage of New Brunswick Crown forest composition as a function of fractional component in a) Softwood and b) Shade Tolerant Hardwood for pre-1995 (coded red) and post-1995 (coded blue). Source: Lawrence Wuest.

Given that climate change indicates a growing affinity of New Brunswick forests to the mixed-wood Acadian forest type, and given that it has been documented that hardwood forests provide a more proficient foundation for turning the forest resource into employment via expanded wood processing, as argued by experts in the 2014 Nature NB Journal,  it behooves the New Brunswick government to reverse the trend toward borealization, to embrace a more ecologically driven forest strategy and to become more transparent in its annual “State of the Forest” reporting.

Lawrence Wuest is an ecologist living in the Upper Nashwaak on unceded territory of the Wəlastəkwiyik, Mi’kmaq, and Peskotomuhkati.