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Ship Harbour Long Lake Wilderness Area declared protected at last!Decade-long conservation campaign ends in victory for natureSeptember 17, 2009The Nova Scotia Public Lands Coalition is celebrating the successful conclusion of a more than ten-year long campaign to protect the Ship Harbour Long Lake. On Thursday, September 17 the area was legally designated by the provincial government as Nova Scotia’s newest protected Wilderness Area. This designation guarantees that the area will remain “forever wild” by making it off-limits to all forms of industrial activity. The Nova Scotia Public Lands Coalition has been advocating for the area’s protection for over a decade. The campaign was led by the Eastern Shore Forest Watch, the Ecology Action Centre, the Tourism Industry Association of Nova Scotia, the Sierra Club of Canada - Atlantic Chapter, the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society - Nova Scotia Chapter, Canoe Kayak Nova Scotia, Trout Nova Scotia with the help of many more NSPLC member organizations. The new Ship Harbour Long Lake Wilderness Area represents one of the last relatively wild and pristine areas left in mainland Nova Scotia. It covers 14,700 hectares of magnificent Acadian forest with an estimated 24 million trees that will never see a saw. It also contains more than 50 lakes and innumerable numbers of rivers, streams and wetlands. The area also provides home and habitat to a large number of native wildlife species including 13 at-risk species and the endangered mainland moose. The new Ship Harbour Long Lake Wilderness Area now effectively links the previously protected White Lake Wilderness Area near Musquodoboit Harbour and the Tangier Grand Lake Wilderness Area near Tangier creating a 35,000 hectare “wilderness backbone” across the forested interior of the Eastern Shore. It also creates Nova Scotia’s first protected areas complex to link backcountry lakes to the ocean. “We are delighted and relieved to finally see this day come,” says Kim Thompson, Co-Chair of Eastern Shore Forest Watch. “It’s the culmination of many years of hard work by hundreds of people who love the Eastern Shore. They have championed the protection of this special place against the ravages of industrial forestry. We are especially pleased that the local ATV clubs joined with us to support the protection and even the enlargement of SHLL. The whole community is celebrating.” "It's the biggest chunk of land protected in Nova Scotia in over a decade," according to Kermit deGooyer, a wilderness campaigner with the Ecology Action Centre who helped launch the campaign to save Ship Harbour Long Lake in 1999. "There was always strong public support for setting this area aside, so it's a relief to finally see it designated". “We applaud the government announcement on the protection of the new Ship Harbour Long Lake Wilderness Area,” says Darlene Grant-Fiander, President of the Tourism Industry Association of Nova Scotia. “Tourism’s greatest assets are our natural product and the protection of our landscape and habitat is crucial to ensuring Nova Scotia remains a pristine and envied tourism destination”. Like all designated Wilderness Areas, the new Ship Harbour Long Lake Wilderness area will continue to be open to people and traditional low-impact recreational activities including hiking, camping, canoeing and fishing.
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