Opposing Forest Spraying*                          

By David Orton

Comment
Green Web Bulletin #6 was written in 1990. Its basic overview of forest spraying in Nova Scotia and its relationship to industrial forestry and how to fight it, is still valid today. The article is now being made available on the internet in the hope that it can be helpful for people who are today taking up forest spraying issues.

1. Theoretical Considerations

Forest spraying struggles can open a Pandora’s box of issues regarding the ongoing destruction of forest ecosystems, and also social and political questions about the nature of economic power within capitalist societies and how that power is used. However, much of the activity opposing forest spraying is basically reformist or “shallow” in character. Such activity does not question how humans should relate to the natural world but accepts the dominant human-centered “resourcist” world view that the non-human world is there as material for human purposes, and assumes that the political and economic structures which directly profit from pulpwood forestry are a given.

It might be noted that a biocentric orientation towards nature (for example, the eight-point deep ecology platform drawn up by Arne Naess)(1) can be coupled with a conventional political view. This is clear from reading the Earth First! Journal, where readers are urged to “participate” by writing their Congressional Representative or Senator in support of some policy, or to become involved in some ecological impact study or timber management plan. Such actions help to bestow legitimacy on the existing order. Yet leftists may have a critique of capitalism with a resourcist view of our relationship to nature, merely tacking on “ecology” to a list of traditional leftwing concerns as part of “going green.” Socialist biocentrism is a theoretical tendency within the green movement which is trying to address such problems. For a green, it seems to me, in the ultimate analysis, the relationship to nature is more fundamental than the attitude towards political and economic structures.(2)

While the above theoretical considerations are important, in my view, they are secondary to practice. That we relate to others on the basis of self-motivated practical involvement in, say, forestry and pesticides issues, enables a movement to function. That a person or group is active seems to be the thread which binds and allows networking and information exchange, notwithstanding theoretical differences. One has to be in the movement to influence the movement— and to be given a hearing. The important thing is for many people to be practically involved. This makes a movement and will generate change. However, for those who want to be the catalysts, a theoretical vision is crucial, as is the content of such a vision.

2. General Comments

In Canada, environmentalists and native groups in British Columbia have been in the forefront of struggles to stop the cutting of old growth timber and preserve wilderness areas. Nova Scotia has been in the forefront of struggles to stop forest spraying. Back in 1961, John S. Donaldson, then General Manager of the Halifax Power and Pulp Co. Ltd. in Sheet Harbor, N.S., stated in a public talk, later printed as a pamphlet, that “We see that the forests of Nova Scotia in general are destined to become pulpwood producing forests.”(3)

Leaving aside manifest destiny, forest spraying is an essential component of what has been called “pulpwood forestry.”(4) This is a forest policy that mobilizes the available economic and political inputs to serve softwood pulp and paper companies in Nova Scotia. Prior to 1961, in this province, pulpwood only made up some 30 percent of the annual harvest; by the 1980s, 80 percent of the woods' harvest was in pulpwood.(5) Pulpwood forestry has certain features that include: reliance on large scale clearcutting, because this is most profitable from a corporate viewpoint; allocation of “crown,” supposedly public forest lands, to long term pulp company lease; even-aged management of forest stands; use of herbicides for “weeding” — that is, to eliminate what are seen as competing hardwoods and vegetation in plantations and in naturally regenerating sites, as well as the use for “site preparation,” before nursery grown seedlings are planted; and use of insecticides to “protect” the desired pulp species, such as balsam fir, black, white and red spruce. This kind of forestry becomes increasingly chemically dependent and requires a lot of human intervention, as well as continual ideological justification using the school system and mass media. Pulpwood forestry is an industrial forestry, using large scale machinery, and is seen publically as impacting severely upon the forest environment. This kind of forestry leads to a reduction of biodiversity as pulp species are favored and hence a degradation of wildlife habitat. Wildlife has a place only if animals can “adjust” to industrial forestry.

Those who support Earth First! have not paid much attention to forest spraying, as shown by the lack of articles on this topic in the Earth First! Journal. Forest spraying tends to be unpopular among rural residents and struggles against pesticide spraying, i.e., herbicides, insecticides, fungicides, growth regulators, etc., used on forests, Christmas tree plantations, blueberry fields, roadsides, power lines (“brush control,” “soil sterilization,” and “wood preservation”), and railway lines, can draw considerable support. Generally, in Canada, the area sprayed in forestry operations is much larger than the acreage sprayed in agriculture, but chemical use in farming is much more intense. There are larger quantities of chemicals used in farm spraying. The advocates of forest spraying often use the comparison with agriculture to try and minimize their own activities.

Regarding forest spraying, except in tree nursery situations (which are chemical horror stories), we are basically concerned with the use of herbicides and insecticides. Herbicides are used against what foresters call “weeds,” or “plants out of place.” The main forestry herbicide in current use is made by Monsanto and is called Vision (active ingredient glyphosate).(6) But there is also some use in Nova Scotia of Velpar L (active ingredient hexazinone) and Princep Nine-T (active ingredient simazine). Vision is a broad-spectrum herbicide which gets absorbed through the leaves. It is non-selective and will kill annual and perennial broadleaf plants and grasses, such as wild strawberries, and raspberries, maples and birches. Pulpwood forestry has created the ideal habitat for the spruce budworm(7) and thus the “need” for insecticide sprays, which have been used in New Brunswick, for example, since the early 1950s. In Nova Scotia, the bacterial insecticide B.t. (Bacillus thuringiensis variety kurstaki — which has chemical additives),(8) has been extensively used. B.t. is misleadingly presented as environmentally benign,(9) but many environmentalists accept its use as a kind of lesser evil, compared to the use of the chemical insecticide Fenitrothion, which is preferred as a budworm killer by the forest industry.

Christmas trees, which are grown throughout the Northeast — in states like Maine and New Hampshire and throughout Atlantic Canada — are grown in a chemically intensive manner. The provincial and federal government-funded publication, Christmas Tree Growers Manual: Atlantic Canada (1987), recommends the use of over 40 pesticides. In Nova Scotia, there are 2,500-3,000 Christmas tree growers and about 30,000 acres under Christmas tree cultivation. The province exports about 95 percent of its total production of approximately two million trees to the United States. It is interesting that Christmas tree cultivation, although administered by the department of the provincial government which looks after forestry, Lands and Forests, is classified as an agricultural activity. This enables the use of chemicals with Christmas trees to be designated an agricultural use. More importantly, the growing of Christmas trees, like the growing of agricultural crops, becomes basically unregulated, escaping the posting of spray notices, adherence to wind speeds or stream buffer zones, etc.(10) Blueberry spraying — there are about 26,000 acres in production and over 1,000 growers in Nova Scotia — is also considered an agricultural activity. Extensive use of pesticides (about 20) is recommended for use in the blueberry grower literature put out by the Department of Agriculture and Marketing, (a provincial government agency) and in literature from Agriculture Canada, (the federal agency).(11)

3. What Forest Spraying Struggles Can Show

Forestry spraying struggles can show the following:

• Humans must adjust to Nature and we must stop trying to make the forests of the world “adjust” to demands of unlimited economic growth. From such a perspective, it is we who must come into harmony with non-sprayed natural forest ecosystems, and not the forests that must adjust to us. Commercial pulpwood forestry spokespersons argue that growing trees is essentially an agricultural activity that produces “fibre.” A plantation of softwoods is analogous to a sprayed field of corn. To the view that a living forest needs to be turned into pulpwood producing woodlots, we counterpose a Land Ethic, inspired by Aldo Leopold: “We must, in our actions, make sure that we uphold the welfare of mammals, birds, fish, insects and other animals; uphold the well being of soils and waters; and uphold the interests of the diverse varieties of trees and other plants in our forests. The extraction of trees, whether for pulp, sawlogs or Christmas trees, must uphold such a land ethic.”(12)

From a Land Ethic perspective, all forest spraying should be banned.

• The demands of the pulp and paper industry on the forests are open-ended, that is, the demands are for continual expansion, given the commitment to growth (grow or go under) of any pulp and paper company. The three pulp and paper multinationals in Nova Scotia, with the assistance of government grants, have “modernized” and improved their daily productive capacities and hence their demand for more “fibre” from the woodlands.(13) Thus, there has been more pulp mill pollution, more clearcutting and pesticide use, more destruction of hardwoods and wildlife habitats, more groundwater contamination, and more plantation forestry, favoring a narrow range of softwood pulp species. Bringing the growth ethic of the pulp and paper companies out in the open for discussion raises the same basic growth values for the societies in which the companies operate, and shows how their values are incompatible with an ecologically sustainable society, given a finite world.

• Chemical use in forestry reduces labor costs. This makes “sense” from a capitalist corporate viewpoint, but the human costs, e.g., possible pesticide-related cancers or other illness, and ecological costs, e.g., killing of “non-target” wildlife or contamination of groundwater, are not born by the pulp and paper company — hence the need to move beyond “private property” considerations. Ecological rights must override private, corporate, state, or crown property rights. Landowners do not have the right to do whatever they want, when their activities impact on other humans and non-human species. Land cannot be “owned.”

• The alliance of the state apparatus at the provincial and federal levels — departments of the environment, forestry, agriculture, and health — with large scale industry like the pulp and paper companies and the chemical industry: The view that it is necessary to use chemicals in forestry and of their “safety” is shared by these various groups. I have attended many community meetings in Nova Scotia organized to air concerns about some local spraying situation. All the government officials, whatever the department, sing the same tune. The lead role is normally assumed by the provincial Department of Environment. If they appear at all, politicians on such occasions shift and squirm on their seats. However, when the chips are down, the politicians will not publicly oppose the pulpwood orientation of forest policy or the use of pesticides which is part of this orientation.(14) Hence, your political representative does not “represent” you; people must rely on their own activities to bring changes in forestry policy and eliminate pesticide spraying.

• The international nature of the pulp and paper companies and their role in destroying indigenous forests around the world: For example, Scott, which runs a bleached kraft pulp mill in Nova Scotia (and has plants in Quebec and British Columbia), operates in about 20 countries. The Green Web took part in an international campaign of information exchange and pressure, to force Scott to withdraw from a proposed tree farm and pulp mill in Irian Jaya, Indonesia. Scott publicly terminated this project, on October 13, 1989, without conceding that the international campaign had anything to do with its decision. The Green Web is also exchanging information with the Swedish Green Party on the role of the Swedish multinational Stora Forest Industries, the largest pulp and paper mill in Nova Scotia.

4. Problems

• Near monopoly of information by the advocates of forest spraying: This includes specific information about location of spray sites, dates of spraying, names of pesticides being used, and material available about alleged safety, which are all on the “permits” authorizing forest spraying. Pesticide information is generally promotional and claims that, if a pesticide is federally registered and used according to the label instructions, it is safe. All pesticide pushers promote an “information number” for the public. This number is widely advertised during the forest spraying season. The toll-free number is operated by the federal Department of Agriculture, the agency which registers pesticides and promotes their use in agriculture.

• The investigation of “violations” of pesticide guidelines/regulations supposedly governing forest spraying is in the hands of government agencies which are involved in authorizing pesticide use. The provincial Department of Environment is the lead agency in issuing the spraying permit, but this permit is co-signed by officials from Lands and Forests and the Department of Health and Fitness. This is an obvious collusion of interests, which may help to explain why in Nova Scotia no one has ever been prosecuted for breaking any forest spraying regulation.(15) My own view is that the most important factor in explaining government inaction is the acceptance of the necessity to use pesticides by provincial and federal governments in Canada, plus the economic power or leverage of the chemical companies and the industrial users of pesticides.

• Obtaining critical information on the particular pesticide being sprayed, understanding this information and disseminating it to people living in the vicinity of forest spraying sites: At the present time, this is really done on a “chance” basis, e.g., some concerned individual looking into a particular pesticide, or coming across some useful information, then seeing that this is written up in a movement publication or disseminated through one of the information sharing networks that exists, and which activists are plugged into.(16)

• A mostly captive media, highly influenced by the pulp and paper companies, that repeats the assurances of the companies and government regulatory agencies, about the necessity to spray and the basic safety of the pesticides being used.

• Penetration of the school system by the forest industry: For me, the most chilling description was given by a member of the Pictou District School Board back in 1983: “We're trying to get kids to stand in the shoes of people in the industry.”(17) A recent endeavour is Project Learning Tree, a program designed for teachers and students from primary school through grade 12. In Nova Scotia, this project is being funded by the provincial Department of Lands and Forests, Forestry Canada (the federal forestry agency), Scott Maritimes Ltd., Bowater Mersey, Stora Forest Industries, Minas Basin Pulp and Paper, J.D. Irving Ltd., and the Nova Scotia Forest Products Association.(18) According to the pamphlet distributed by Product Learning Tree, “PLT has been adopted for use within 49 States, Sweden, Finland and five Canadian Provinces, (British Columbia, Manitoba, Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia).” Forest nurseries run by the provincial government are designed as “dual purpose,” so that they serve as education centres, with school students being rotated through to experience first hand the growing of softwood pulp seedlings and the pesticide/nutrient bath which sustains such life.

• Economic and social pressures on rural people: Work can be for the local pulp and paper mill (in Nova Scotian terms, a relatively privileged position for workers) or in the woods cutting pulp. There are also jobs planting seedlings on clearcuts. People in such positions are often conscious of how far protest can be carried.(19) Socially, people in rural communities depend on each other, in a personal way, much more than in urban areas. The farmer who has organized a roadside spray program to supposedly eliminate “noxious” weeds seen as threatening his farm fields lives at the bottom of your hill and helps with his tractor when your car goes off the road in the winter.

• Having a credible forestry alternative which can respond to the question, “What will we do if the pulp companies move out?”

 5. Points Useful to Emphasize

Points useful to emphasize in forest struggles include:

• A forest policy which puts poisons (all pesticides are poisonous to some degree) into the forest environment, at a time when the general public is becoming increasingly aware of how chemically contaminated our environment has become, must be wrong. Also, why should rural residents have their immediate life space threatened by forest spraying or other commercially related pesticide activity? The contradiction between growing environmental awareness — that “pesticides never stop killing” and forestry policies which seem oblivious to, and increasingly locked into, the use of chemical poisons is a fundamental one,(20) which cannot be masked, and it works for the anti-pesticide activist.

• All available forestry pesticide information distributed by governments, the pulp and paper companies, and the chemical corporations, e.g., Monsanto, the Canadian Pulp and Paper Association, promotes the use of pesticides in forestry.(21)

• Distinction between active and inert ingredients and contaminants from the production process: Data normally available on pesticides concern only the active ingredient. Even concerning the active ingredient, manufacturers of pesticides do not allow access to the raw data on which they base safety claims. Such data, in a capitalist economic system, are considered “trade secrets” and not open to independent critical scrutiny. Inerts can be harmless fillers or poisonous in their own right or enhance the toxicity of the active ingredient Essentially the land and people are subject to unknown chemicals:

“People cannot talk about the health or environmental effects of a pesticide unless they are basing their conclusions on testing of the full formulation: active ingredients, intentionally added inert ingredients, and contaminants.”(22)

• Spray drift: Chemical trespass cannot be avoided from forestry spray operations and, increasingly, people become aware of this. Spray drift from aerial applications, the norm in forest spraying, is said to be about five times greater than ground-rig applications.(23) Aerial application of herbicides or insecticides is much less expensive for the companies than ground applications. Pesticide drift occurs through spray drift and vapour drift.(24) The vapour drift results when the pesticide evaporates. “Buffer zones,” while better than nothing, are no guarantee against spray drift.

• Wildlife: All pesticides impact on wildlife. An insecticide not only kills the “target” insect(s). Herbicides destroy many plant species that provide food and cover for insects and birds. Given the human-centered nature of whatever pesticide research that is carried out, digging out wildlife impact information can be a problem. But help is sometimes close at hand. The provincial and federal governments in Canada put out handbooks on pesticide use. We have used the Ontario Pesticides Safety Handbook (1986 edition) to point out the lethal impact on fish, birds, and bees of some of the pesticides used in Christmas tree cultivation(25) and commercial blueberry growing.(26) The important thing to understand is that such pesticides continue to be used, given the overwhelming weight attached to capitalist economic considerations, by users and government “regulators.”

• Pesticides which were once declared “safe” have later become officially unsafe. Most people carry in their heads some consciousness of this. Pointing out the previous track record of a manufacturer of a pesticide can be helpful in undermining safety assurances by users and promoters. Monsanto, for example, was the main former North American manufacturer of PCB’s now banned. This same company made alachlor (Lasso), an agricultural herbicide, registered for use in Canada in 1969 on such crops as corn and soybeans, now banned in Canada and officially recognized as a groundwater contaminant and animal carcinogen. Monsanto still disputes this characterization. The general picture is conveyed in a quote from the Brundtland Report: “By 1986, more than 500 chemicals and chemical products had been banned altogether or had their uses severely restricted in the country of origin.”(27) This same U.N. report advocated “greater use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides”!(28)

• Sweden, where forest productivity is greatly admired in pulpwood circles, has severely restricted pesticide use. There is no aerial spraying of herbicides.(29) The ecological downside of Swedish plantation forestry is not normally spoken about.(30)

6.What Is Needed/Organizing Strategies

Many more greens and environmentalists need to become involved, at a deep level, in forestry and pesticide struggles. The following tools are needed to enable us to better fight back on the forest spraying front:

a. A scientific group responsible to, and funded by, the environmental and green movements, which can analyze and supply data for particular struggles against pesticide use, and analyze samples of pulp mill effluent.

b. An easily available public information network, similar in access to the Agriculture Canada toll free telephone line, making critical pesticide information accessible,, and also ecological alternatives to existing forestry practices, pulp mill production processes, methods of growing Christmas trees, blueberries, and so on.

c. A biocentric and anti-capitalist information network of material helpful for forestry and pesticide activists that can be tapped into.

There is also an important role here for progressive academics and scientific workers.

There are two basic green objectives on the theoretical or ideological side. One is to de-legitimate pesticide use and the world view which supports this. The other is to show that no government agency is going to protect human and non-human environments from pesticide contamination. If anything is going to be done, people in their own communities are going to have to do it themselves.

“Informed consent or informed rejection of pesticide use”(31) is a concept for environmental action, developed out of experience in Nova Scotia, which can help in promoting the above two objectives. Informed consent or informed rejection is the right to consent to, or to veto, a pesticide use in your immediate environment; the right to have all the information on which to base your decision; and the right to consider and have access to information on the alternatives to pesticide use. While informed consent or informed rejection can be applicable to urban and rural spraying situations, for a forest spray bloc, the immediate environment has been defined in Nova Scotia as one kilometer outside of the area to be sprayed. Informed consent or informed rejection puts the power of decision-making into people's hands and is, therefore, bitterly opposed by the pesticide lobby.

Organizing strategy on the resistance side focuses on the communities closest to forest spray sites. As pesticide sprayers do not like publicity, all measures encouraging public opposition need to be promoted. As all spraying is being done “legally,” stopping the spraying will be done illegally, at the actual spray sites, through people being prepared to put their bodies on the line. “Private” initiatives, where appropriate, using such helpful guides as Ecodefense: A Field Guide to Monkeywrenching. are part of such resistance.

                             Footnotes

* This article on forest spraying draws upon a talk given at a workshop held at a Vermont deep ecology conference in early September of 1989. The conference was organized by the Earth First! group in Vermont and brought together activists from both sides of the border in the Northeast. My point in giving this particular workshop (I also gave another workshop at the conference called “Socialist Biocentrism: What Is It?”) was to encourage Earth First! organizers to become more involved in pesticide issues, with a particular emphasis on forest spraying. Several comments made by CNS commentators on the original “Notes” were helpful and have been responded to. Also, some additional material has been incorporated for this article.

 1. See Arne Naess. “Deep Ecology and Ultimate Premises,” The Ecologist, 18, 4/5, 1988.

2. In terms of personal identity, for a socialist green who has a biocentric orientation towards nature, I believe one’s self definition is first as a “green.” Socialism is subordinate to this.

3. John S. Donaldson, The Pulp Industry in Nova Scotia: 1880-1960, Bulletin No 27, p. 5.

4. This term and the analysis behind it was introduced by this writer in a presentation “Pulpwood Forestry in Nova Scotia”, on behalf of the Socialist Environmental Protection and Occupational Health Group, to the Nova Scotia Royal Commission on Forestry in Halifax, on April 19, 1983. This presentation was later published as Pulpwood Forestry in Nova Scotia and the Environmental Question, by the Gorsebrook Research Institute for Atlantic Canada Studies, at Saint Mary’s University.

5. Nova Scotia Provincial Forest Practices Improvement Board, The Trees Around Us: A Manual of Good Forest Practice for Nova Scotians (1980), p. 10.

6. In forestry, Vision used to be called Round-up. The active ingredient, glyphosate, makes up 41 percent of the Vision formulation and inert ingredients make up 59 percent.

7. See the analysis presented by this writer in “The Case Against Forest Spraying with the Bacterial Insecticide Bt,” Alternatives, 15,1, December, 1987/January, 1988.

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid.

10. The Green Web, a small independent research group serving the needs of the environmental and green movements, to which I belong, has produced a six-page document, “Christmas Tree Cultivation: Open Season on Pesticides,” Bulletin 3, November, 1988. It gives an overview of the industry including the pesticides which are promoted. Aerial spraying of Christmas trees is supposed to be governed by forestry spraying permits. Most spraying of Christmas trees is done from the ground and is essentially unregulated, if done by the grower or leaseholder.

11. See the three-page “Blueberry Spraying: A Chemical Horror Story,” Bulletin 1, Green Web, November, 1988. It lists the various insecticides, fungicides and herbicides recommended for use on lowbush blueberries. Also discussed are the various problems of pesticide residues, groundwater contamination, impact on wildlife, burning of fields, etc. Aerial spraying of blueberries requires a pilot to have a permit for this. Most spraying is ground spraying and essentially unregulated.

12. Taken from a two-page public statement, “The North Shore Environmental Web”, August, 1986.

13. For example, Scott Maritimes Limited, the bleached kraft pulp mill in my own local area in Nova Scotia, went into operation in 1967 with a capacity of around 500 tons of pulp per day. Today (1990), the mill is operating at around 800 tons per day.

14. In the last provincial election, the leader of the New Democratic Party (a social democratic party) said “she accepts the current use of herbicides” and went on to state that “the government — not the province's three large forestry companies — is to blame for the condition of the industry.” Sec Judy Myrden, “NDP Outlines Forestry Policy”, The Chronicle Herald (Halifax), August 27, 1988. More recently, the Nova Scotia Minister of Lands and Forests, wrote a letter to the President of Stora (letter dated February 7, 1990), the largest pulp and paper mill in Nova Scotia. The letter denied that there was any validity to criticism of Stora raised by the Swedish Green MP Per Gahrton when he visited the province in January, 1990. The Minister noted in his letter. “We agree that weeding in plantations is an essential part of forest management in Nova Scotia.”

15. There are a number of examples of spraying accidents which have made the media, although there are many unreported incidents. The most famous “violation” is documented in a trial initiated by environmentalists to stop herbicide spraying by Stora (then with a different name) in 1983. A “monitor” from the Department of the Environment noted that the pulp and paper company had sprayed on 19 occasions in excess of the then wind speeds and, on two occasions, sprayed directly into water courses. See J. Nunn, Palmer et al. v. Nova Scotia Forest Industries (Nova Scotia Supreme Court Trial Division, 1983), p. 280. In his Summary, the Judge noted, “Guidelines are in existence for both aerial and ground spraying and are provided with the permit, but they are not extensive nor are they binding” (p. 278). The judge, of course, “judged” for the pulp and paper company.

16. The circulation of the information about the identification of the inerts in Vision (Round-Up) by independent researchers in 1988, and, in 1989, of the identification of the contaminant, in the same herbicide, would be a good example of this. See the article by Mary O’Brien, “Roundup. Vision, POEA, and 1,4-Dioxane: Why Full Formulations Are the Problems”, Journal of Pesticide Reform, 9,4, 1990, pp. 14-15.

17. Sam McDougall, quoted in an article, “‘People of the Forest' Under Way”, Forest Times, 5,2, 1983, p. 12. This article is a report of a “co-operative venture in curriculum development” by the Canadian Pulp and Paper Association and the Education faculty of the University of Toronto. Other examples of attempts to win the hearts and minds are a regular summer course for teachers on forestry and a play “Woodlot Rap,” which is designed to show high school students the need for “forest management.”

18. “PLT Teaches Tree Lore”, Forest Times. 12,2, 1990, p. 9. Jeanne Cruikshank, a public relations spokesperson for Scott, is chairperson of the PLT committee.

19. Two local examples: The first is a pulp cutter who wanted to co-sign a letter to the editor opposing a forest spraying situation. But be eventually decided that only his wife could sign, because of possible anger by the pulp company. The second is a person living in the area with an ecological forestry outlook. He runs a woodlot, a Christmas tree operation, and a sugar bush without the use of chemicals but he also works for the pulp company. When asked if he would be a public speaker, he said he could only “go so far” because economically he was dependent on the pulp company to pay his mortgage, etc.

20. The Nova Scotia government claims its forestry policy aims at “a doubling of forest production by the year 2025” (Forestry: A New Policy for Nova Scotians, 1986, p. 3). All of these seedlings have to be “protected” chemically.

21. In 1986, I gave a talk to East Hants county council in Nova Scotia, as a follow-up to a presentation by Scott justifying their herbicide forest spraying program. Scott gave the following information to the councilors as an “information package.” This same basic package is distributed by Scott to rural residents who live within a kilometer of forest spray sites.: Roundup Herbicide Bulletin, January, 1984, Roundup Q & A, July, 1984, and Roundup In Forestry, no date. All three documents are published by Monsanto. Also, a “Dear Resident” letter from Scott, dated August 1986; Herbicides In Forest Management, no date and no authorship, but a provincial government Lands and Forests document; and A Matter of Safety: The Story of Forest Pesticide Regulation, no date, published by the Canadian Pulp and Paper Association. In 1989, Scott sprayed about 4,000 acres in Nova Scotia with Vision. See, “Scott Completes Spray Program,” Shopping News (New Glasgow), September 26, 1989.

22. Mary O'Brien, “But What About the Other Half? The Fascinating Tale of (Non-)Inerts,” Journal of Pesticide Reform, 6,2, 1986, p. 7.

23. David Pimentel and Lois Levitan, “Pesticides: Where Do They Go?” Journal of Pesticide Reform,7,4, 1988, p. 2.

24. Dr. Bob Mickle, a research scientist with Environment Canada, stated, “During crop spraying, 60 to 70 percent of the spray becomes airborne and never reaches its targets.” (Shopping News [New Glasgow], June 20, 1989).

25. The following chemicals advocated for use in Christmas tree cultivation are known to be toxic: to fish — captafol, clordane, dicofol, fenitrothion, malathion, maneb, and permethrin; to birds — chlordane, dimethoate, diazinon, fenitrothion, methoxychlor, and trichlorfon; to bees — acephate, carbaryl, chlorpyrifos, dicofol, dimethoate, fenitrothion, malathion, chlordane, methoxychlor and trichlorfon (Handbook, pp. 22-24).

26. The following chemicals advocated for use in lowbush blueberry cultivation are known to be toxic: to fish — permethrin; to birds — dimethoate, azinphos-methyl, and methidathion; to bees — dimethoate, trichlorfon, azinphos-methyl, phosmet, methidathion, and dicamba. Ibid.

27. Great Britain Dept. of Environment, Our Common Future: A Perspective by the United Kingdom on the report of The World Commission on Environment and Development, Produced by the Department of the Environment on behalf of the United Kingdom Government (London: Department of Environment, 1988). 1987, p. 224.

28. Ibid, p. 135.

29. An article in a Canadian Forestry Service publication claims that herbicides were totally banned in Sweden in 1980, but this does not seem to be correct. Stora in Nova Scotia states that only aerial spraying of herbicides in Sweden is not allowed. For the total banning position, see J. B. Scarratt. “Forestry Practices in Scandinavia, Part 1. Sweden,” Forestry Newsletter, Summer 1988, Great Lakes Forestry Centre, p. 6. Scarratt says, “The use of herbicides was banned in 1980, and this clearly has had a major impact upon reforestation and plantation establishment practices.” For the Stora ban on aerial spraying position see, Judy Myrden and Cameron MacKeen, “Stora, Swedish Critic Dispute Pulp and Paper Practices,” The Chronicle Herald (Halifax). January 17, 1990.

30. See for example, Linda Gamlin. “Sweden's Factory Forests,” New Scientist, 117,1597, 1988, pp. 41-45.

31. An article by this writer, presenting the history of the concept of informed consent in Nova Scotia and an evaluation of its usefulness will be published under the title, “Informed Consent or Informed Rejection of Pesticide Use: A Concept for Environmental Action” in Philosophy and Social Action, 16,4, October-December 1990.

 Published in CNS (Capitalism, Nature, Socialism) 2 (1) 1991 pp. 109-123.