Laws, logs and lumber : a history of forest legislation in Nova Scotia

Abstract

This thesis examines the development of comprehensive forest management from the late eighteenth century to the Lands and Forests Act, S.N.S. 1926, c. 4, particularly concentrating on Crown lands management (or lack thereof). In addition, the study focusses on "the business" of the forest and legislative attempts to impose order on competing forest uses as well as governmental responses to forest fires and forest pests. An analysis of various legislative measures is set against the context of politics and legal development in late eighteenth and nineteenth century society, politics and legal development.

The Journals and Proceedings of the House of Assembly of Nova Scotia and the Statutes of Nova Scotia provide the most tangible evidence of that most ephemeral of legal fictions "the intent of the legislators". But by piecing together the Reports of the Commissioners of Crown Lands, the Game Commissioners Reports, the wording of various statutes and other primary and secondary sources, a picture emerges of the economic importance of the forest and the sustained inability of the legislators to protect it.

The study demonstrates repeated failures of environmental and natural resources management in forest protection.