The nature soundtrack to the film is now available for download here,

wildearthvoices.bandcamp.com/track/the-acadian-forest


This film is a response to the loss, by clear cutting, of a piece of Acadian Forest in my local area by Wagner Forest Management Ltd in the fall of 2010. This ecosystem backed onto a large wetland and was part of a watershed for a nearby river. Phone calls to the Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources Biologist were brushed off.

I will always remember one special part, a small spring that had likely been there for 10,000 years beneath old Maple Trees, flowing slowly into the stream in the valley, it contained inches thick moss and lichens and ancient Liverworts and waterplants and also recording the Ravens nest, the adults feeding their young as Ovenbirds sang on the forest floor. Both gone now. The trees made into hardwood flooring. Amazing really.

The reason for making this film is an attempt to draw attention to the increasing loss of the indigenous forests of Maritime Canada and the North Eastern United States to industrial forestry, while also highlighting the responding loss in the flora and fauna of this bioregion.

The film explains how the forest industry, with government help through lack of protection, slowly turns a thriving habitat into a tree plantation, while also shedding light on the forestry PR department’s favorite myth that replanting is a good thing.

If you think it will help, please share this film, tweet it, blog it, facebook it, play it to your friends and frien-emies, your classrooms, your children, your elected officials. Then go and make your own film about the loss of an eco-system or a place you love in your own bio-region and post it to vimeo. Pay it forward, if you will. We all need to become 'ACTIVists'. Thank you for watching.

Mark Brennan