From NDP Candidate Merydie Ross

Merydie Ross is the NDP candidate for Lunenburg West

“We have all been shocked by the Liberal government supporting the secret sale of Owl’s Head to a foreign developer. As I run to represent Lunenburg West, I can’t help but worry about the future of natural spaces in our area.

Recently, Rachel Kendall, the popular South Shore @wildwetlands enthusiast, and I met at Cherry Hill Beach, here in Lunenburg West. Rachel’s advocacy around saving Owl’s Head from being secretly sold for development has garnered her local acclaim. Rachel worries that if Iain Rankin and the Liberal government could secretly sell Owl’s Head to developers, the Liberals could also secretly sell Cherry Hill Beach.

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Corema - Broom Crowberry

How Do We Put a Value on Owls Head?

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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Letter from Concerned Scientists

Caitlin Porter, MSc, Research Associate
Jeremy Lundholm, PhD, Professor & Department Chair
Ecology of Plants in Communities Lab
Biology Department
Saint Mary’s University

To the Honourable Labi Kousoulis,

We are biologists and environmental scientists writing to express our concern with the potential development of the proposed Owls Head Provincial Park Reserve.

Over the past 15 years, the Ecology of Plants in Communities lab at Saint Mary’s University has worked with collaborating NGO and NS provincial government partners to describe and classify heathland ecosystems across Nova Scotia. We have included the proposed Owls Head Provincial Park Reserve in our field surveys. Our years of data reveal that Owls Head is ecologically unique and of importance to biodiversity conservation.

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