N.S. voters say environment, health care, homelessness, among top election issues

The Chronicle Herald spoke to people out and about in Halifax about the issues that they care about the most. Here’s what they had to say. 

Environment

For Philip Church, who is from Hantsport and currently lives in a van with no fixed address, saving the environment — and Owls Head Provincial Park specifically from being developed into golf courses and residential properties — is most important.“What’s wrong with the status quo? Why do we always have to be taking more land away from animals and wildlife? I think we’re good where we are,” said Church, 42.

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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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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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