consultation

New Freedom of Information Request Reveals Government Process to Facilitate Sale of Owls Head Provincial Park

Public servants have been working with the prospective buyer, Lighthouse Links Development Corporation, to facilitate the sale of Owls Head Provincial Park

Update: In November 2019, Lands and Forestry had to file more documents in the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia, in response to the applicant’s request for a judicial review. As a result, we learned that the price for this unique coastal ecosystem had been assessed at $306/acre.

This means that 704 acres would only cost the developer $216,000, far below the asking price of nearby parcels. The appraiser (Turner and Drake) had determined the price based on the land being undevelopable, yet Lighthouse Links does plan to develop it.

Included in the Freedom of Information (FOIPOP) package are the signed Letter of Offer for the sale of Owls Head Park Reserve, a Valuation Report, and emails between members of the government staff and Gilbert’s representatives.

(more…)
By Lindsay Lee, ago
Owls Head Aerial

A filthy rich American wants to profit from turning Owls Head into a golf course, and he apparently wants the Canadian taxpayer to subsidize the effort

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)

(more…)
By Save Owls Head, ago

Owls Head Provincial Park and Legal Designation

Guest Post by Karen McKendry
Wilderness Outreach Coordinator, Ecology Action Centre
February 21, 2020

Owls Head Provincial Park has been proposed for legal protection as a park for a long time and effectively used as an unmanaged park since at least the 1970s. But why was it not legally protected before? And why does that matter? And what’s this plan that it was listed in?

(more…)
By Save Owls Head, ago

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.

(more…)
By Save Owls Head, ago