The Bluff Trail Woodens River Watershed Environmental Organization

Parks & wilderness

Five Bridge Lakes Wilderness Area

Close to 8,600 hectares of Crown land between Highways 103 and 333, protected in 2011 after a decade of work by a coalition of thirty-five community organizations. The Bluff Trail runs through the middle of it.

Protected
8,600 ha
Designated
2011
Coalition
35+ groups
Mainland moose
25–30

A meaningful piece of ground

The Woodens River watershed is embedded in a larger landscape, the Chebucto Peninsula. Those lands form a meaningful biogeographical unit by virtue of their common geology and vegetation, their high density of lakes, streams and wetlands, their proximity to the ocean, and their largely rural character. The Five Bridge Lakes Wilderness Area is the largest block of land on the peninsula protected from development.

It is well established in conservation science that larger areas support and conserve more species over time than small ones. Just as important, this area occupies a large space in the centre of the peninsula, which means it would take relatively small steps to construct conservation corridors connecting the different blocks of protected land around it. Corridors would increase the species carrying capacity of every one of those blocks and, collectively, make a very significant conservation area.

Other protected land on the Chebucto Peninsula

  • Provincial parks: Long Lake, Crystal Crescent Beach, Lewis Lake, and the Peggy's Cove Preservation Area
  • Protected wilderness areas: Terence Bay (designated with 30 other areas in 1998), Blue Mountain–Birch Cove Lakes (2009), and Five Bridge Lakes (2011)
  • Nova Scotia Nature Trust: Purcell's Cove Conservation Lands
  • Nature reserve: Duncan's Cove

Large blocks of Crown and municipal land remain outside all of these. The HRM lands known as the Western Commons, around Ragged Lake, have been under active consideration for a regional park with a protected wilderness area. Residents on Halifax mainland south continue to seek more protection for the Purcell's Backlands.

How it was protected

Ten years from a public meeting to a designation, carried by a coalition that grew to thirty-five organizations — environmental groups, but also residential associations, recreation groups, businesses and developers.

  1. 2001 Founding

    The Five Bridges Wilderness Heritage Trust is formed

    Its explicit purpose: conserving the public lands bounded by Highways 103 and 333 in their natural state, for public use. It grew out of an Interim Wilderness Trust WRWEO helped create the same year, after public demand at a large meeting WRWEO sponsored.

  2. 2008 Resolution

    WRWEO commits to a protection strategy

    At its March AGM, WRWEO unanimously resolved to pursue protection under the 1998 Nova Scotia Wilderness Areas Protection Act and to join a coalition pursuing the same end. The Trust passed a similar resolution shortly afterward.

  3. 2008 Coalition

    The Chebucto Wilderness Coalition forms

    WRWEO and the Trust, with the St. Margaret's Bay Stewardship Association, the BLT Rails to Trails Association, the Safety-Minded ATV Association, the Resource Opportunities Centre and others. It grew to more than thirty-five supporting organizations.

  4. Jun 2008 Proposal

    The case goes to the Minister

    Presented on 2 June by the late Dr. Wilfrid Creighton and the coalition. It went on to win the support of HRM Regional Council, the local MP and MLAs, the Liberal and NDP caucuses, and the Department of Natural Resources.

  5. Oct 2009 Candidate

    Declared a Candidate Wilderness Area

    On 19 October, opening two years of public consultation and socio-economic study.

  6. 2011 Designated

    Formal designation, after consultation with the Nova Scotia Mi'kmaq

    Close to 8,600 hectares, encompassing the entire Bluff Trail, one headwater lake, and parts of several other lakes in the Woodens River watershed.

The area is managed by Nova Scotia Environment and Climate Change, through its Protected Areas and Ecosystems Branch. The Bluff Wilderness Hiking Trail is managed by WRWEO under an agreement with the department; bicycles and motorized vehicles are not permitted on it. The Old Coach Road and Fire Road within the wilderness area are managed by the All-Terrain Vehicle Association of Nova Scotia under a separate agreement.

The FBLWA Stewardship Coalition

On 5 February 2013, representatives of the five groups that led the push for protection agreed to form a community stewardship coalition, to work with Nova Scotia Environment to jointly plan, initiate, prioritize, fund, implement and coordinate projects in the newly protected area. The five groups signed the coalition's charter at a community workshop at the St. Margaret Sailing Club on 16 March 2013.

  • Beechville Lakeside Timberlea Rails to Trails Association
  • Five Bridge Wilderness Heritage Trust
  • Safety-Minded ATV Association
  • St. Margaret's Bay Stewardship Association
  • Woodens River Watershed Environmental Organization

Founding documents: the coalition charter (PDF) and questions and answers (PDF).

Why it is worth protecting

Brown-water lakes and heritage brook trout

The area encompasses major portions of several watersheds with many magnificent lakes, rivers, streams and wetlands that remain minimally disturbed. Among the species they support are heritage brown-water brook trout populations, and closer to the sea, alewife and American eel. These trout are highly sensitive to habitat degradation and fragmentation, and the brown water that protects them from the effects of acid rain depends on the continued integrity of the land-water system.

A mosaic of terrestrial habitat

Broadly: extensive, spectacular barrens with pockets of forest and wetland above the Old St. Margaret's Bay Road, and below it largely undisturbed deciduous, mixed and coniferous forest with pockets of barrens, wetlands and treed bogs. That lower forest includes significant old-growth oak and red spruce stands. The old-growth, multi-aged deciduous red oak stand has features that make it unique for Nova Scotia, and the type appears to be rare within eastern North America. The old-growth red spruce stands contain some of the largest red spruce in the province.

Open granite pavement in early spring, patched with red crowberry and pale reindeer lichen, a stand of leafless white birch and scattered black spruce behind, under a clear sky.
Barrens above the Old St. Margaret's Bay Road in early spring: granite pavement, crowberry, reindeer lichen and birch.
A dense mat of red-tinged broom crowberry growing over a granite ledge beside a lichen-crusted boulder, with a bed of pale reindeer lichen and leafless shrubs beyond.
Broom crowberry against reindeer lichen. The species is threatened outside Nova Scotia and declining within it.

Rare and declining species

The barrens support healthy populations of broom crowberry (Corema conradii), a coastal plain species threatened outside Nova Scotia — in the Magdalen Islands, PEI and several American states — and declining rapidly within Nova Scotia through habitat loss. The rare mountain sandwort (Minuartia groenlandica) is also found there. Many songbirds that are declining in number breed here, including the Canada warbler. A limited survey of lichens on Bluff Trail loops 1 and 2 revealed more than 100 species.

Endangered mainland moose

The wilderness area is home to a group of roughly 25–30 mainland moose, which are endangered in Nova Scotia. They are indigenous and genetically distinct from the Cape Breton moose, which were established by reintroduction from Alberta in the 1940s. Moose need, or benefit most from, a mix of wetlands, open areas and forest in different successional stages, providing food, cover and relief from heat — and they are negatively affected by roads and trails. This area provides those habitats, largely free of both.

Fish and game for traditional fishing and hunting are likewise protected; such activities are permitted within protected areas.

The case for protecting them beyond the wilderness boundary — and for the corridors that would connect this block of land to the others — is set out at the foot of this page.

The argument

Moose and corridors

The moose matter for more than themselves. Protecting them, and providing corridors for their movement between blocks of land on the peninsula and with the mainland, protects and can enhance the native biodiversity of the whole region.

In a letter of comment to Nova Scotia Environment on the environmental assessment for Highway 113, WRWEO co-chairs Richmond Campbell and David Patriquin argued the case. They were responding to a statement in the assessment that the Chebucto Peninsula population was “not considered sustainable by NSDNR and as such there is no area specific recovery plan in place”, and to the suggestion that movement of Chebucto moose north of Highway 103 was insignificant.

A fact sheet distributed at the public open house for Highway 113 in January 2010 showed eight reported moose sightings north of Highway 103 and five close to or on the highway itself, between 2004 and 2009. A WRWEO board member noted that those numbers likely underestimate real movement: during the same period he could personally attest to four sightings near the intersection of Route 3 and Highway 103 alone — a juvenile in his back yard at the north end of Frederick Lake, a young moose wading in the brook that feeds that lake, a neighbour's report of a full-grown moose on the highway by the overpass, and a friend's report of a large moose on his lawn. It seems very likely that significant movement of moose out of the Chebucto Peninsula through the lightly settled areas near Highway 103 occurs despite the hazards, and that serious attention should be given to corridor protection there. Corridors can include relatively inexpensive engineered crossings.

Why a recovery plan is appropriate

  • The mainland moose is a legally protected species, which requires protection of all groups regardless of size.
  • Small, isolated groups may matter most in the long run. It is conceivable that disease could wipe out a large percentage of the bigger groups but not the smaller isolated ones, which would then be important to repopulation. They are numerically sufficient to act as a seed group, judging by experience in Newfoundland and Cape Breton. Heterozygosity would be reduced, but the appropriate strategy is to maintain the Chebucto group and increase its size and genetic diversity by bringing in orphaned moose from New Brunswick — the same genetic lineage, unlike the Cape Breton animals. The group is healthy, the habitat is good, and its numbers are far easier to monitor than other populations, which makes it a good case study for conservation.
  • Corridors benefit every species, not just large ones. They are critical to the long-term species richness and ecological integrity of all protected areas on and adjacent to the peninsula. Field-scale experiments have documented that corridors increase the exchange of animals between patches and facilitate pollination and seed dispersal, and that connected patches hold 10–18% more vascular plant species than unconnected but otherwise equivalent ones — a spillover effect extending roughly 30% of the patch width beyond the corridor itself.
  • The effects of not building corridors take decades to appear. E.O. Wilson's rule of thumb holds that a 90% reduction in total species area produces, on average, a 50% reduction in species carrying capacity — but not immediately. It happens as local populations go extinct and are not repopulated from connected areas. It might take 10, 50 or even 200 years to see locally, and in the absence of counter-measures it is virtually certain to occur.
  • The moose are a conservation asset. Large animals capture imagination and empathy. The challenge is to demonstrate that we, as 21st-century humans, can coexist with an elusive animal living next door to an urban population approaching half a million. Florida's approach to the panther is one model: broad public support, many protected corridors, and a specialty licence plate funding the work. Nova Scotia already funds piping plover protection the same way. A Chebucto moose plate should hardly be a hard sell in the homeland of Moosehead hockey.

Even once corridors are secured, that is not the end of it. A major effort will still be needed to promote sustainable, biodiversity-friendly use of the commercial and residential lands across the Chebucto Peninsula.

Sources: letter of 22 February 2010 from Richmond Campbell and David Patriquin to the Environmental Assessment Branch, Nova Scotia Environment; Tewksbury et al. 2002, PNAS 99(20); Brudvig et al. 2009, PNAS 106(23); C. Wallace et al. 2012, Wilderness corridors: habitat for moose and mink on the Chebucto Peninsula.

Next

Context

The Woodens River watershed

Nineteen connected lakes, water quality monitoring, brook trout, and the pressures on all three.

Learn more The trail

The Bluff Wilderness Hiking Trail

More than 30 km of backcountry footpath through the middle of the wilderness area.

Trail guide About

The people who did this

WRWEO has worked on this watershed since 1995. The wilderness area is one result among many.

About WRWEO

Protection was the beginning, not the end

The corridors that would connect this block to the others still need advocacy, and advocacy needs an organization behind it.

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