Owls Head has long been surrounded and shaped by the ocean. The rugged landscape reflects the legacy of the ice age, and the hardy ecosystems that developed after the ice retreated mirror the unique environment in which rare plant communities now thrive.
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This province wholeheartedly endorses open-pen fish farming that contaminates our bays with chemicals and fecal waste. It is engaged in a deal to sell off Crown land at Owls Head so a rich American can build three golf courses. It sees no problem with waterways polluted by gold mining. And it clearcuts large tracts of forest, including old growth stands.
Bob Bancroft, the Federation of Nova Scotia Naturalists and the Blomidon Naturalists Society had to spend the money and time to win a recent court case (“Nova Scotia broke endangered species law, judge rules,” May 30) that forces the province to obey its own laws designed to protect endangered species.
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Michael Gorman
CBC News
Posted: May 15, 2020 2:49 PM
A valuation report prepared for the company that wants to buy hundreds of hectares of Crown land in Little Harbour, N.S., to build up to three golf courses and other developments says the “highest and best use” for the land is “recreational or conservation purposes.”
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Tim Bousquet
Morning File,
May 15, 2020
Halifax Examiner
Yesterday, Chris Miller, of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, received a stack of documents in response to a Freedom of Information requested related to the provincial sale of Owls Head, and tweeted about them.
You’ll recall that Owls Head, which was once listed as a potential future provincial park on the Eastern Shore, and which includes an area with a “globally rare” ecosystem, was delisted as a provincial property that will receive legal protection, so that it can be sold to a company called Lighthouse Links Development, which wants to turn it into a golf course.
Read the full article> (Owls Head is story #3)
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Eastern Shore Cooperator
Posted on March 12, 2020
By Richard Bell
In a show of province-wide opposition to the government’s controversial decision to sell Owls Head Provincial Park, 23 groups submitted a joint letter to Premier McNeil on Tuesday, March 10 calling on the government to do three things:
Office of the Premier
7th Floor, One Government Place
1700 Granville Street
Halifax, NS
B3J 1X5
March 10, 2020
Dear Premier Stephen McNeil:
Owls Head is an ecologically significant area along the Eastern Shore that is deserving of legal protection. It contains a number of rare ecosystem types, as well as important habitat for migratory birds and species-at-risk. It is a key headland within the “100 wild islands” ecosystem.
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The following is an excerpt from the Nova Scotia Wetland Conservation Policy.
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(more…)“Owls Head is characterized by repeating bedrock ridges that support a coastal barrens ecosystem. A globally rare heathland plant community occurs on the crests of the ridges and biodiverse bog wetlands predominate in the depressions between the ridges. This landscape pattern on the coast is only otherwise known from Blue Rocks, Lunenburg County, amidst residential developments with no conservation protection.”
– Biologists Caitlin Porter & Dr. Jeremy Lundholm