From CPAWS NS:
(more…)CPAWS Nova Scotia is excited to share this information. On our kayak expedition to Owls Head last week, we observed an endangered leatherback sea turtle. It was feeding on jellyfish very close to shore, about 20-30 feet out from the shoreline, in the deeper waters near the headland.
Located in the Mi’kmaw traditional territory of Eskikewa’kik, the Eastern Shore Islands include hundreds of islands stretching along the coast from Clam Harbour to Liscomb Point. This is the largest archipelago in eastern North America, and it’s only a short drive from Halifax.
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Professional sea kayak instructors Eleanor & Jenn are doing a summer series of destination paddles throughout the beautiful 100 Wild Islands on the Eastern Shore of Nova Scotia. This area has incredible potential for recreational tourism in conjunction with environmental protection. Thank you, Eleanor and Jenn, for organizing not one but two paddles around Owls Head Provincial Park.
We’d also like to thank kayaker Peter Copus for sharing these lovely photos with us. Please click to enlarge.
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Courtesy of Sarah de Coutere and friends. You can click to enlarge.
(more…)There’s a saying, “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts,” which refers to the synergy that is created when the pieces all complete each other and contribute to a greater experience.
Owls Head was not appraised by the secret real estate deal guys as the integral part of the whole Eastern Shore Islands that it represents.
The public lands of Owls Head, 700 acres of pristine coastal heathlands, represent an invaluable connection between the Wild Islands project and the Eastern Shore Seaside Park System. They are a classic, representative landscape of parallel quartzite ridges, bogs and coastal spruce forests with a globally rare plant community.
Today, we are sharing in-depth excerpts from the Report on the Ecological Importance of Owls Head Crown land. Dr. Jeremy Lundholm, PhD, and Caitlin Porter, MSc, voluntarily provided this information to the court and have subsequently given us permission to share it online. You can find their unabridged report at the bottom of this page. If you’d prefer, you can read the post of their conclusions instead.
“While Owls Head is making headlines as Nova Scotia’s ‘newest’ provincial park, it’s actually a park 47 years in the making,” said Lindsay Lee, Secretary of Eastern Shore Forest Watch Association. “After nearly five decades of public consultations, government plans and scientific studies, Owls Head Provincial Park is finally getting the legal protection it needs and deserves.”
To understand just how significant that is, it’s important to understand where we started.
(more…)“The evidence on this Motion clearly establishes that Owl’s Head was portrayed to the public as a Provincial Park. Government documentation and maps, going back as far as 1978, refer to the area as “Owl’s Head Provincial Park”. Further, it was managed by Lands and Forestry to maintain its reserve status. The public had every reason to assume Owl’s Head was a Provincial Park and, therefore, attracted protections not available on Crown lands.”
NS Supreme Court Justice Kevin Coady, Interlocutory Decision, Page 3 (Emphasis is Ours)
How do we put a value on Owls Head Provincial Park?
There have been few valuations for rare plants, let alone globally rare plant communities. For example, a rare Shenzhen Nongke orchid is valued at $202,000 per plant. We would need to do a series of transects and plots at Owls Head Provincial Park to get an honest number of the rare plants and communities to put into the economic calculus of a ” balanced ” view.
“A mature tree can have an appraised value of between $1,000 and $10,000.” So let’s do a survey of all the ancient coastal white spruce stands at Owls head and put an average value of $2000 on the individual specimens, but let’s be fair and only value the trees that are 75-100+ years old, the ones impossible to replace in a lifetime.
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