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Filling in the Gaps

The provincial government has a responsibility to complete Nova Scotia's Protected Areas Network and to honour its national and international commitments in this regards. In recent years the government has been dragging its feet, making little progress on the ground. What is required is for government to order its staff to do a comprehensive gap-analysis study that would identify specific areas of publicly-owned (Crown) land that would contribute towards the completion of the Protected Areas Network. In the absence of our government doing its job, the Nova Scotia Public Lands Coalition and the Ecology Action Centre have identified 18 proposed Protected Areas or "Hotspots".

The Nova Scotia Public Lands Coalition works to support the protection of more Public Land as a fundamental part of the completion of the Protected Areas Network in the province. The Coalition is focused on Public Land first because we already own it and don't have to buy it from private owners at massive expense to taxpayers, and second because many of the last remaining large, roadless and relatively intact wilderness areas in the province exist on publicly-owned land. If protected, these large areas would contribute greatly to the core of the Protected Areas Network, but even if all of our Hotspots were protected, more would still need to be done. It is logical to then look at how private lands could be aquired for the final compleation of the Network.

Private Land

It is agreed among environmentalists, scientists and government alike, that a Protected Areas Network requires adequate protection for all of the 80 distinct Natural Landscapes that exist in the province. To accomplish this will require the protection of some privately owned land in conjunction with protection of more Public Land. Considering that 70% of the province is privately owned, it is not surprising that the best (and in some cases the only) examples of some Natural Landscapes may be found only on private land. Two organizations in Nova Scotia actively work to acquire and/or protect private land: The Nova Scotia Nature Trust, and The Nature Conservancy of Canada. The Nova Scotia Public Lands Coalition supports their efforts.

Buffers & Borders

This ongoing work to secure binding protection for both public and private land in the province is the first priority in completing the Network. However, protecting these areas alone will not be enough. Ensuring that the land bordering these protected areas is managed in a manner consistent with conservation values is an important aspect to ensuring the communities within the protected areas remain healthy. (See Border Issues)

Wildlife Corridors

Making linkages between the protected areas is an important step in ensuring that the plant and animal communities within the protected areas are able to migrate and interact with other populations over distances. Isolated populations of plants and animals will eventually suffer from the lack of genetic diversity, and will be far more susceptible to local extinction. To ensure migration and interbreeding between different populations, corridors of semi-protected wilderness must be created between protected areas.

These corridors needn't be afforded full protection. In fact this is where a planning scheme like IRM can actually be applied to benefit nature. Allowing some resource extraction within these corridors is possible, however, paved roads, power-lines, clearcuts, open-pit mines, large agricultural fields and residential development are not compatible with wildlife corridors. In Nova Scotia, it would likely make sense to practice selection forestry within these corridors, where individual trees are harvested within a standing forest instead of clearcuts. The gravel roads created to extract the timber in such corridors would degrade the quality of the environment somewhat, but considering their relatively small width, and relatively low use, they do not pose the same barrier to wildlife as large, well used paved roads.

It should be noted, that one four-lane highway cutting across a wilderness corridor effectively destroys the usefulness of the corridor, as it creates a barrier impassable to terrestrial wildlife. Finding long stretches of relatively wild land without such barriers is becoming harder in Nova Scotia as development continues to spread, so planning for these corridors now is imperative if we are to succeed at creating a Protected Areas Network that will truly protect our wild heritage over time.