Dear Friends,

Even with the drought and fear of wildfires, we’ve made great progress this summer.

See our new video about trees.

We’re grateful to so many people in our community for protecting nature, and especially Jane & Jack Kimball for launching our Summer Ecological Fellowship!

Warm regards,

      Jim Sunderland, President

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Rain near LaHave, late August.

Today, our woods are unnaturally skewed toward softwoods, which are much more flammable without a hardwood overstory for shade.

We’re boosting biodiversity by re-planting the hardwoods. Of all the actions we can take, this will have the biggest impact on our future.

LaHave was once a great tract of Oaks, Elms, and other hardwoods that grow 50% taller and live three times longer than Spruce and Fir.

Livestock suppressed hardwoods. People brought deer to Nova Scotia around 1900. Deer kill hardwood seedlings.

Humans also spray glyphosate herbicides to kill hardwoods. Glyphosate causes cancer.

You can help re-plant the hardwoods by sponsoring our tree nursery and by dedicating individual trees for weddings, children, and in memory of loved ones.

Left: Without hardwoods, conifers colonise cleared lands to form stands of same-aged trees that die at the same time.
Right: Hardwoods form an upper canopy that shades generations of conifers rebuilding the soil (image by ChatGPT).

As a conservation charity, LaHave Coastal’s purpose is to boost biodiversity throughout all of LaHave, from sea to sky.

In our first foray into the undersea habitats of LaHave, we were delighted to host Brian Branfireun from Western University and David Sweetnam from Georgian Bay Forever with their underwater autonomous mapping robot, a YSI EcoMapper.

Jane Kimball captured the adventure on our Instagram feed.

This EcoMapper autonomously ‘flies’ a pre-programmed route underwater and maps the shape of the bottom using side-scan sonar. David added a camera to capture a video to overlay on the map.

Brian explained that “our goal is to use the EcoMapper to build a map of LaHave’s underwater habitats. For example, mapping kelp forests has usually been done by human divers.” Kelp experts from Dalhousie and DFO helped us identify the most likely areas to find kelp on the outer seaward side of the islands.

This summer’s initial missions with the EcoMapper set the stage for a return visit next summer.

David and Brian launch the EcoMapper on a mission in LaHave.

This summer Jack Kimball laid out our first nature trail! It’s in the Bell Woods, which is between West Dublin and Bells Cove. We secured this land with funding from the province and many generous donors.

In the spring, we’ll host a community tree planting event to introduce you to the trail.

The trail supports our tree planting as we move toward planting larger trees like this Elm, see photo below. These Elms are resistant to Dutch Elm Disease, which came to North America from imported lumber.

Jack Kimball, Tony Burton, Jim Sunderland, and Jane Kimball planting an Elm at Bells Brook along the new trail.

This spring, in partnership with the Southwest Nova Scotia Biosphere Reserve, we planted 11,000 Sugar Maples and about 500 each of Red Oak, Eastern White Cedar, and Hemlock.

Our partners at West Dalhousie Forestry Crew helped us protect these seedlings from deer browsing. We’re experimenting with several approaches, including electric fences, brush piles, and spraying with lanolin grease, which soaks into the waxy coating of the leaf and stem.

We also have 3,000 new Red Oaks growing in our greenhouse. We’re focusing on growing larger trees. Greenhouse conditions help trees grow quickly past deer height, so it’s easier to get them established in the woods.

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