CBC Maritimes

With so many contractors and subcontractors in the forest, who's in charge of monitoring aerial spraying ?

Aerial spraying of pesticides in Maritime forests has been a flashpoint for more than a generation.
Most recently, silviculture workers in the Restigouche - St Quentin - Kedgwick area of Northern New Brunswick complained of nausea and headaches after working close to tracts which had been sprayed.
Betty St-Pierre spoke on their behalf with us last week. She wasn't one of the workers, but, in part, became their spokesperson when they told her they were afraid of losing their jobs if they went public. They said they'd already had a warning that they'd be out of work if they attended a public demonstration.
The spraying of the pesticide Vision - designed to eliminate vegetation that might compete with softwoods - is finished in that area for the season. But questions remain about what happened.
We spoke with Brent Clark,a Forest Utilization & Silviculture Technician with New Brunswick's Department of Natural Resources. Then we heard from Christmas tree growers in Nova Scotia who've been using glyphosate for 30 years with no apparent harm to wildlife or insects.





It has a delicious-sounding name, but really - you don't want to eat it.
It's "pancake batter tunicate" - didemnum vexillum, to be exact - a messy, invasive species that fouls the marine environment. It appears to be working its way up from the Northeastern United States into the Bay of Fundy.
In order to track its spread and get a grip on the threat it poses for local fisheries and aquaculture, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans conducted a one-day rapid assessment in Clam Cove, near Fairhaven in Deer Island, New Brunswick.
Jennifer Martin is the DFO Research Scientist who supervised the assessment and we reached her near the wharf to learn what her divers had found.

The road to buying a new car or truck can be filled with crater-sized potholes and even some dead ends. George Iny, President of the Automobile Protection Association, joined us from Montreal to help smooth the journey suggesting which pointed qu