Contested Conservations: Forestry and History in Nova Scotia

Forest conservation in Nova Scotia found its institutional expression in the 1920s, long after the establishment of many other Canadian and leading global centres of conservation science. With several differing and competing conservation ideologies from which to choose, the provincial government loaned its support to British, European, American, and Canadian versions at various times. Three successive leaders of the province's main forestry agency—J.A. Knight, Otto Schierbeck, and Wilfrid Creighton—demonstrated quite different ideals of conservation, and equally different strategies for negotiating the politics of forestry, ranging from prickly independence to eager cooperation with rival power centres in the federal government, international agencies, and in industry. Each distinct approach dictated a set of policies that helped shape the forest and the forest industries of Nova Scotia. Contrary to the assumption that conservationists past and present approach more or less closely a single, ahistorical scientific norm, the account of policy vacillation in this essay illustrates the ideological content and historical contingency of forestry science