Work on hold in Brigham pine grove

The planned partial clearcut of a pine grove in Brigham has been put on hold due to adverse climatic conditions, Pierre Lefebvre, director general of the municipality, confirmed late last week.

Under a forestry management plan announced in February for a 21-hectare forest owned by the town, a 2.7-hectare pine grove was supposed to be mostly clearcut, and an adjacent forested area of a little less than one hectare was intended to be partially clearcut; “maintenance gardening” including the cutting of some dead, dying or dangerously positioned trees was supposed to be carried out along hiking trails in the rest of the forest. Some residents raised concerns about what they considered a lack of public consultation and a lack of a detailed reforestation plan. An online petition calling for a moratorium on the current forestry plan and for a wider public consultation has gathered 308 signatures as of this writing.

On Feb. 28, the day before the work was scheduled to begin, a public notice was posted on the town’s website to the effect that “the work that was scheduled in the coming days in the pine grove must be rescheduled in light of climatic conditions.”

Lefebvre later told the BCN that no new date had been determined for the beginning of work. “To avoid pointless damage and protect the wood, the soil needs to be either dry or frozen, and it’s neither one right now,” he said. “We’re having a hard winter for that.” Lefebvre said town officials would meet with forestry engineers to determine a new start date. “It will be sometime in the next few months; it could be in the fall. It depends on what the engineers tell us.”