Forestry professors from the University of New Brunswick and the University of Maine say they are not surprised to hear New Brunswick government forecasters are projecting much larger yields of wood from replanted areas on Crown land than was thought possible five years ago.

According to a report by CBC News, those projections were used to justify a decision last month to place 150,000 hectares of Crown land under conservation protection just four years after that protection was removed from a similar amount of land by then-premier David Alward.

In 2014, the Alward government was attempting to meet demands for more Crown wood from the province’s biggest mill owners, chiefly J.D. Irving Ltd.

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