KJIPUKTUK (Halifax) — The Halifax Media Co-op has acquired a series of internal communications from New Brunswick’s Department of Natural Resources that comprise literally hundreds of pages of emails related to newly-retired, whistle blowing, provincial deer biologist Rod Cumberland.
These communications are interesting for a variety of reasons, the least of which because they provide an insight into the manner that the bureaucratic machine in New Brunswick is very much linked into streamlining their publicly-presented message with their counterparts in industry, in particular with the efforts of J.D. Irving.
Whistle-blowing scientists take note: Never underestimate your ability to send your former employer into reaction mode, with all the bureaucratic and corporate cooperation and message massaging that that entails.
Upon his retirement in 2013, Cumberland, with early assistance from the Conservation Council of New Brunswick, began to publicly rail against the effects of New Brunswick’s glyphosate application program, whereby, since the 1970s, an estimated 12,000 – 15,000 hectares of Crown land are sprayed with the herbicide per year. Glyphosate mixtures are applied to Crown land in order to eliminate hardwood tree species and select for softwoods, which are then largely used for pulp. Readers may be more familiar with agricultural applications of glyphosate, where it is consistently among the most highly used herbicides in North America.
Cumberland’s wedge issue was that glyphosate spraying in New Brunswick is responsible for the province’s dwindling white-tailed deer population, as it destroys their food supplies. He has, however, continuously highlighted the scientifically-proven detrimental health impacts of exposure to glyphosate mixtures, and has gone so far as to liken the future health-related fall-out from glyphosate applications in New Brunswick to “this generation’s Agent Orange.”<<<Read the Rest of Part I>>><<<Part II Can be Found Here…and there’s a link at the bottom of Part I for Part II.>>>
