No new blueberry development on former Tracadie range, province says

The provincial government has announced it will not develop any more of the former Tracadie firing range on the Acadian Peninsula for blueberry production. 

"We recognize the importance of the wild blueberry industry and its economic benefit to the Acadian Peninsula and the province of New Brunswick," Pat Finnigan, minister of agriculture, said Thursday in a news release.

"However, we have been listening to the concerns of the local community and acknowledge the need to balance further development on the Tracadie range with social acceptance."

Deforestation for blueberry development on the range has been a controversial topic in Tracadie, leading to protests and concern from local officials.

The province will honour current leases and agreements for use of the range by First Nations, but will cancel a request for proposals to develop about 830 new hectares for blueberry development there, the release said.

Serge Brideau, who was a Green Party candidate for Tracadie in the provincial election, has been outspoken against the deforestation of the range.

He said the announcement left him cautiously optimistic, but that he was concerned the word "moratorium" was not used by the province.

"It's all in the details and time will only tell. Right now, yes, I'm happy, but I'm also a bit worried."

Brideau has been onto the range to see the deforested areas, including some that he said have been cut down since the election.

"It's where I used to fish when I was younger, and I'm still worried about the future," Brideau said.

He's not against the blueberry industry, he said, and there's plenty of land in the north of the province to use, but he wants to see a moratorium so that a proper strategy on forest management can be developed. 

"They're walking in the right direction, and I hope that they continue. But this just can't be a little bone that they're throwing at us, it won't suffice," Brideau said.

Decision leaves room for improvement, industry group says

Donald Arseneault is the executive director of N.B. Blueberries, which represents about 200 wild blueberry growers in the province, and a former Liberal MLA and cabinet minister. He said he's "not concerned at all with the announcement."

"The fact that they're going to honour the leases that were signed and they're going to continue the conversation with the First Nations, I think that's good," Arseneault said.

"We're going to have to continue to make our case."

The Acadian Peninsula "is just the gem of the wild blueberry industry, but we just haven't done a great job at educating the public on it's uniqueness, and we haven't done a great job either of making it accessible to people on the Peninsula."

Arseneault said in other blueberry-producing parts of the province, such as St. George and Pennfield, local blueberries are easily purchased. But on the Acadian Peninsula, most end up frozen and sent off to processors.

"So it's almost like the general public doesn't see the benefit of the industry in their region because you don't have access to it."

Arseneault said Crown land used for agricultural purposes in Gloucester County, which includes much of the Acadian Peninsula, has only grown from 24,000 acres in 1986 to 26,000 acres in 2021.

"So when the media and some people in the public are trying to portray that we're deforesting the whole Acadian Peninsula, for either wild blueberries or peat moss or whatever, it's the same amount of land that's for agricultural purposes as there was 40 years ago."

"Sometimes people are trying to make it sound worse than what it seems, and I find that's quite unfortunate, but it just goes to show we've got to do a better job."