A few more pieces of the story:

The almost 69,000 hectares (170,000 acres) of forested land that J.D. Irving Ltd. is selling in Nova Scotia is the land they purchased from Bowater in 1994.

The woodlands supplied timber to Irving's Weymouth sawmill. Since the sawmill was closed 3 years ago, Irving has managed the land, but has not had any active forestry operations.

The province of Nova Scotia would love to purchase the land to assist their goal of restoring at least 12% of Nova Scotia's land mass to Crown ownership by 2015. However, the estimated price is too high.

Last year Irving is rumoured to have offered it to the province.... for $100 million.

Environment Minister David Morse said, "We've known about this for some time and we'd love to be able to purchase the Irving properties as a wilderness area, but there's only so much resources available and we have to manage what we've got."

Morse said the province is just 2% away from its Crown land ownership goal and needs another 183,000 hectares to get there.

The property is listed at LandVest with no price. The sale will be conducted as a sealed bid process with the bids to be opened on April 2nd.

See the listing: http://www.landvest.com/property/NS0101/1/

More information:
N.S. government can't afford to buy 69,000 hectares of forest from Irvings (Canadian Press)