Our work at Five Islands Provincial Park has been a multi-year project. This blog post was written as a review of our initial efforts in 2020. We have an updated post about our 2021 work at this link. However, if you're curious about the work that we did in 2020, please read on ...
Our organization did some tree planting work at the Five Islands Provincial Park this past September (2020).
This provincial park is located in north central Nova Scotia, on the north side of the Minas Basin. This is on the south side of the arm that connects most of mainland Nova Scotia with New Brunswick. The town of Truro is about an hour to the east. Here's an overview graphic of eastern Canada, showing the location of this park:
This project was put together to initiate afforestation on some open areas, and to repair some of the extensive damage done by Hurricane Dorian in 2019. This storm battered central Nova Scotia quite strongly, and was the costliest storm in history when it came to damages to the provincial power grid.
Damages within the park were not as bad as in some of Nova Scotia's other provincial parks. However, since there were open areas in the park from previous insect damage, this park was a prime candidate for the planting of some new seedlings. When we offered to assist with this work, the park staff were very happy to accommodate.
The park foresters estimated that a series of openings along the upper sides of Camping Area B would be amenable to the addition of seedlings. We decided that this project would be approached in two phases. We would plant several thousand trees in the fall of 2020, and follow that up with a second phase of planting in the fall of 2021 to complete the project.
Before our team arrived on site, we were given some maps outlining the approximate area that the foresters recommended we focus on. For context, here is one of those maps:
The first day that we arrived on site was cool and somewhat overcast, with high humidity in the air. We were given a tour of the area, and we spent some time with the local forester doing a final review of the areas which would be covered. This project was completed over a three-day span. The second day of planting was sunny with cloudy periods. The final day was rainy. While some people don't like to work in the rain, we always like to see our new seedlings getting watered right away.
The ground covered was generally a shallow slope, with a full cover of vegetation and a few existing juvenile conifers. Here are two representative photos:
Our species mix for this project included a total of seven species. We had three conifers (red spruce, eastern white pine, and eastern hemlock), and four species of deciduous hardwoods (sugar maple, red oak, mountain ash, and yellow birch). We planted almost nine thousand trees in this park in 2020, and will double that number in 2021.
Here's a photo of Chris (the head forester at the park), examining some of our red oak stock:
Here's a photo of some of the sugar maple seedlings that we planted:
Here are a few more photos taken while working on this project, including the welcome sign at the front entrance, a photo of myself (Jonathan) getting ready to plant some trees, a tree with a large burl, and three photos taken down near the beach:
The first phase of planting on this project went very smoothly. We're looking forward to returning during the fall of 2021 to finish the work! A post about that work will be linked here in late 2021.
If you'd like to learn more about the Five Island Provincial Park, visit their web page:
parks.novascotia.ca/park/five-islands
Thanks for reading!
Replant.ca Environmental is a Canadian company that plants trees for carbon capture and builds community forests. We also plant trees in national, provincial, and municipal public parks to mitigate damage from wildfires, storms, insects, and forest diseases. We operate thanks to numerous small contributions from the general public, in addition to larger project sponsorships from businesses and corporations around the world. If you'd like to learn how to show your support, visit our donations page. Even if you aren't able to make a contribution, we very much appreciate when people are able to share our posts or our website link on social media, to help spread the word about the work that we're doing!
To learn more about the various species that we plant, visit the conifers page or the deciduous (hardwoods) page on our website. Thanks so much for your interest!
Incidentally, our organization is often seeking additional land for our carbon capture projects. Please visit this link if you might know of a recently-harvested property that we could rebuild into a permanent legacy forest.
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