Forests

Past

History of forests in the area

PEI is originally composed of Acadian Forest species such as sugar maple, yellow birch, beech, red oak, with scattered white pine, red spruce, red oak, white ash and hemlock. Almost all of the original Acadian Forest was cut down to make way for agriculture by the 1800s. The current forest is made up largely of low to moderate shade tolerant species, usually white spruce, balsam fir, poplar, pin cherry, white birch, with eastern larch and red maple in wetter areas. This is often referred to as “old field succession”.

Over the last two decades there has been an intensive effort by the two environmental groups in the watershed to reforest the riparian zone with Acadian Forest species. The have included primarily white and green ash, red maple, eastern larch and eastern cedar with lesser numbers of yellow birch, sugar maple and red oak. Planting efforts peaked when in 2011 the Winter River-Tracadie Bay Watershed Association staff planted about 4500 trees in an attempt to restore some of the Acadian Forest species.

Present

43% of watershed is currently forested

FIGURE 5 Land use map WITH LEGEND - use types rearranged
Do you own a wood lot?

There are many programs available that can help wood lot owners to be responsible owners, whether their primary goals lean towards protection or resource use.

Future

Tree planting

We know about planting trees – we have planted almost 21,000 native trees and shrubs since our group was established!

 

Tree planting 1

If you own land in the watershed and want to plant trees, you can ask us for advice.

If you own sensitive land such as an area considered to be a buffer zone, wetland, or high sloped land, we might be able to help more. For example, if farmers want to expand the size of their buffer zones we might be able to plant some trees for free.

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