The Ecology

Reports and articles from scientists on the high biodiversity of Owls Head Provincial Park Reserve

Golfing in Pea Soup

The coastal location of Owls Head Provincial Park makes it unsuitable for a golf course for many reasons, including:

  • The need to protect the adjacent marine environment
  • Nova Scotians’ limited public access to the coast (roughly 5% is publicly owned)
  • Coastal erosion
  • The storm surges that are intensified by global warming
  • The incompatible climate of the site

Due to the weather along parts of the Eastern Shore, locals have been sceptical of the plan to establish golf courses at Owls Head Provincial Park.

“It is definitely colder and a lot foggier than in other places. Starts in April. When it is foggy, sometimes we can’t even see across the street to the neighours.”

Carol Ann MacPhee
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By Lindsay Lee, ago
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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By Christopher Trider, ago
Hugh Chisholm - Eutrophication Leads to Suspected Algal Bloom on the Nine Mile River (adjacent to Links at Brunello Golf Course in Timberlea)

Golf Courses & Fertilizer Effects

Eutrophication: the process by which a body of water becomes enriched in dissolved nutrients (such as phosphates) that stimulate the growth of aquatic plant life usually resulting in the depletion of dissolved oxygen

– Merriam Webster

When fertilizers get washed into lakes or rivers, it can lead to eutrophication. In these photos, we see that eutrophication has led to a suspected algal bloom on the Nine Mile River (adjacent to Links at Brunello Golf Course in Timberlea).

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By Lindsay Lee, ago

How Golf Courses Would Jeopardize Important Marine Ecosystems

Development on this particular site would cause irreparable harm to the unique geology, flora, and fauna that have developed over the past 10,000 years. It will also have adverse impacts on the offshore marine environment.

In Short:

  1. The proposed development would require large amounts of fill. Therefore, sediments would run into the marine areas, negatively affecting sensitive eelgrass beds and salt marsh habitats.
  2. Once established as golf courses, the use of pesticides and the threat of runoff of toxic chemicals (during rainfall events or through the site’s interconnected hydrology) would threaten these same marine areas.

“For a large development such as golf courses, the construction and subsequent run-off from the land as well as increased nutrient loads all have the potential to negatively impact these ecosystems.”

– Marine Biologist Dr. Kristina Boerder

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By Lindsay Lee, ago

Wetlands: Why We Need Them

“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
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By Save Owls Head, ago

Meet the super-plant from Nova Scotia’s shorelines: eelgrass

The carbon converter found by Owls Head protects against storms and gives fish and lobster a safe place to grow up

Mira Dietz Chiasson
The Coast
February 27, 2020

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Dive below the waves somewhere along Nova Scotia’s coastline and you might encounter a thriving ecosystem that is vitally important to our fisheries, our ways of life and our climate: An underwater eelgrass meadow.

See the play of sunlight in the meadow’s swaying underwater forest, fish darting between the blades of grass and discover other creatures feeding and clinging to the vegetation. Eelgrass may resemble a seaweed, but it’s actually a plant, complete with flowers and roots, that spends its life under the waves.

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By Save Owls Head, ago