[Sust-mar] Buy Back Mersey- an opportunity for Nova Scotia forestry, not to be missed!

[benna.keoghoe at merseytobeatic.ca]

Hello all forest lovers,

As some of you may know, Bowater Mersey Paper Mill, closed it's doors back
in June and the owner Resolute Forest Products is selling off their lands.
There is approximitely 500,000 acres of land for sale for an estimated,
great price of $100-$150 million dollars. While this may sound like alot
it only works out to be around $170/acre.

The Mersey Tobeatic Research Institute and the St. Margarets Bay
Stewardship Association is partnering up with several other organisations
and hundreds of the public, to campaign for the government to buy back
these lands as Crown Land and to return it to a combination of
recreational land, conservation and sustainable local forestry. This is a
once in a lifetime opportunity to change our current Nova Scotian forestry
crisis.

What can you do?

Have a look at the website www.buybackmersey.ca and the facebook pages Buy
Back the Medway, Buy Back the Mersey, and Buy Back Rossignol (the three
districts) for more information. The cause is front cover news in the
Chronical Herald today!
http://thechronicleherald.ca/novascotia/130199-province-urged-to-buy-back-forests

Then please consider writing your own personal letter to Darrell Dexter
and tell the NDP government how important it is to you, that they buy this
piece of land to return the forests to Nova Scotians and not to sell our
resources to foreign mutli-national companies, which will more than likely
just liquidate the resources.

Finally, there is an open community meeting being held at the Caledonia
Fire Hall in Queens County at 7pm on Tuesday, August 28th. The purpose of
this meeting is to gauge public support for crown purchase of the land and
community-based forestry in Queens County. There will be guest speakers
and an opportunity for questions. The meeting will be an hour in length.
Please come to learn more and to share your opinion.

I thank you greatly for taking your time to consider and to support this
once in a lifetime opportunity for our forests!

Benna

Benna Keoghoe
Forest Stewardship Coordinator
Mersey Tobeatic Research Institute
9 Mount Merritt Rd
PO Box 215
Kempt, NS   B0T 1B0

Tel: 902-682-2371
Fax: 902-682-2760
www.merseytobeatic.ca