Introducing the Nova Scotia Working Woodlands Trust

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. Much of this work was through the Western Woodlot Service Cooperative, which the MCFC helped form in 2016.

Through our work with the WWSC and talking to private woodlot owners in our region, we found a clear gap in services - the ability to acquire lands. The Nova Scotia woodlot owner is aging, and often does not 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.

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.