Media Coverage
Nova Scotia Nature Trust acquires 182 hectares of coastal land next to Owls Head
Organization still raising $700K to keep the land in Little Harbour protected permanently.
Organization still raising $700K to keep the land in Little Harbour protected permanently.
The Nova Scotia Nature Trust is closer to protecting another chunk of Nova Scotia’s valuable coastline.
The organization is acquiring 450 acres of land next to Owls Head Provincial Park. The parcel will be known as the Little Harbour Conservation Lands and includes habitats along the Eastern Shore that are described as “ecologically rich.”
(more…)“I doubt if the ministers who made this announcement today are doing it with the intention that some future government might undo what they have done,” Plourde said of Monday’s announcement to designate 9,300 hectares of Crown land, including 800 hectares in the newly designated Sackville River Wilderness Area, for the benefit of Nova Scotians and the environment,” says Ray Plourde of the Ecology Action Centre.
(more…)Despite the court’s contention that the “issue arising in this case has not recurred and may never recur,” a very similar situation could arise from a proposal by Cabot Cape Breton, owners of two successful 18-hole golf courses in and near Inverness on the western side of Cape Breton, applying to the province to lease about one-third of the 275-hectare West Mabou Beach provincial park to develop a third 18-hole golf course in the same area.
(more…)“The recent contention around golf course proposals for West Mabou and Owls Head surely must have Nova Scotians, locally in the Mabou area and across the province, wondering if our provincial park properties will ever be truly protected from the ambitions of private developers and the presumed entitlements of political operatives,” writes Dale Smith, who served as manager of parks planning with DNR and as director of Protected Areas with NS Environment.
(more…)Neal Livingston, co-chair of the Margaree Environmental Association, sees a parallel between the fight to preserve Owls Head Provincial Park on Nova Scotia’s Eastern Shore and efforts to safeguard Cape Breton’s West Mabou Beach Provincial Park from a similar golf development plan.
(more…)The reaction was swift and almost universal across the province: “OMG, not again!”
The dust has barely settled on the Owls Head fiasco and another American billionaire golf course developer has the temerity to take another run at another treasured piece of protected public lands — this time at West Mabou Beach Provincial Park — for the second time, no less, having already been told no by the government in 2018.
Cabot’s audacious request sets the stage for another Owls Head debacle. The nerve of these guys!
(more…)“This species being the only one found in the Maritime provinces would easily fit in as a species at risk in the Nova Scotia context. So in that way it’s quite special. You could say it’s even rarer than a species at risk would be.”
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