you raise some valid points but I have some significant concerns regarding your proposal.
who pays the credit- the taxpayer? besides subsidizing a private industry this may cause some problems with our American friends regardng NAFTA.
Is this credit a one year or multi year credit.
If a one year credit then how does the government authority have to monitor the situation??
If government monitored who/what pays the yearly expenses to administer the program??
if monitoring discovers cheating in the program how much is the penalty and would a fraud or theft charge be the most appropriate penalty.
Untimately I think your suggestion, while worth looking into or modifying, would lead to taxpayer waste, questionable results and massive fraud by some individuals, another bloated breaucracy wasting money.
using your 300 trees per acre works out to 15000 dollars per acre. I would suggest a better use of government resources would be to get the government out of the wood business, eliminate subsidies and let private business/woodlot owners hire and pay their own foresters and land managers and let them manage their private lands to their full potential unencumbered by government as opposed to more subsidies.
the 15000 dollars per acre saved could then be used to purchase more Crown land. under your proposal the "land" is merely leased and would never become a resource for all Nova Scotians.
The silvivultural credit program is dirived from current forestry regulations. This program is 100% paid for by the private lumbering companies. If a lumbering company chooses not to due a silvicultural progam based on the volume of wood being cut, then they must pay a cash sum to to government so a silvicultural program can be completed. Except for selection management credits that can be reclaimed every 10 years, providing stand criteria is maintained, all other credits are a once payment.
Depending on tree size and volume, a wood lot owner would be able to create a marten habitat or wild life habitat, then if appproved as a credit, they would be able to sell that credit to a lumbering company, which in turn ould use the credit as part of there requirements meeting current existing government regulations.
There is no such wild life credit in existance at the moment, so a new catagory would have to be created. Following existing policy and procedures, there is already a system of checks and balances in place reguarding such credits as specified by regulation.
A wood lot owner like my self could sell this type of credit based on the reguirements estabished to maintain the wild life. For example leaving two trees per acre might give me a value credit worth $100 per acre if the credit value is tyied to the actual value of the tree. It certainly would not be less. If the course wood matter has to be replaced every 30 years to maintain the wild life, then at the end of each 30 years a credit could be sold by the owner if the established criteria is met.
70% of the forest in Ns are privately owned. Our new forest policy moving away from clear cutting will increase the value of single trees. Our mills in the province that remain will need a certain volume of wood to maintain operations. When shortages come, usually the price increases. I have absolutaly no doupt that as single tree value increases, there will be less biomass for wild life left as it will be harvested by the owner.
