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LiscombSize & LocationThe proposed Liscomb Wilderness Area covers roughly 60,000 hectares of remote forests along the Eastern Shore of Nova Scotia. It extends from the interior lakes of the Liscomb Game Sanctuary in Halifax County eastward to the St. Mary's River in Guysborough County. Industrial forest land in the vicinity of Big Liscomb and Island Lakes border the proposed Wilderness Area to the north. Its southern boundary typically runs a few miles inland from Route 7 and the Atlantic coast. There is one coastal component at Liscomb Harbour. Four existing Wilderness Areas, would be connected by the much larger proposed Liscomb Wilderness Area.
Description
The Liscomb region of Nova Scotia's Eastern Shore has traditionally been one of the most wild and rugged parts of the province. It is where glaciers scoured out a diverse landscape of drumlin fields, perched boulders, wild and windy rivers, and dozens of lakes of all shapes and sizes. Boreal-like spruce stands emerge from wet sites wedged between glacial deposits while rich hardwoods and mixed forest blanket rolling hills. Wetlands are abundant here, particularly channel fens and lakeshore swamps along riparian areas, and plateau or domed bogs in headwater zones. Because of its remoteness, the Liscomb region was a haven for moose and one of the last places where woodland caribou would roam in Nova Scotia. 
The Nova Scotia government recognized the grandeur of this land in the 1920s with the establishment of the Liscomb Game Sanctuary. The intent was to "create a game reserve (and)...a Provincial Park where tourists can enjoy beautiful scenery, fishing, and the greatest hunting of all, camera hunting" (Nova Scotia Dept. Lands & Forests, 1928 Report) Despite its status as a "sanctuary", the Province has since bundled nearly all public lands within Liscomb into long-term logging leases held by Kimberly Clark and StoraEnso. Kimberly Clark has been clearcutting heavily in the sanctuary since the late 1980s and continues to push roads into wild forests here. (Sanctuary rules ban hunting and trapping, but do not prevent logging or road building.)
Liscomb Game Sanctuary Clearcut
Despite all the clearcutting, there are still some spectacular public lands within Liscomb and its surroundings. The Eastern Shore Forest Watch and the Nova Scotia Public Lands Coalition have proposed that roughly 60,000 hectares of public land in the Liscomb region be set aside as a Wilderness Area. Several thousand hectares would overlap with the sanctuary. Our vision is that Liscomb can again function as the large wild refuge envisioned by legislators some eighty years ago. A Wilderness Area can do this by setting aside the region's last roadless areas, physically linking existing protected areas to each other with protected corridors, and allowing degraded lands within this matrix to recover. Over several decades a healed wilderness extending from the interior of Halifax County to the Atlantic Ocean can emerge. Outstanding Features of a future Liscomb Wilderness Area
In 2002 Bill Dooks, an MLA whose riding formerly extended into some of the proposed Wilderness Area, submitted a petition in the Nova Scotia legislature supporting the Liscomb Wilderness Area proposal. The petition was signed by over 2,000 local residents.
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© Nova Scotia Public Lands Coalition, Ecology Action Centre, 2006 |
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