A gigantic chunk of the Chebucto Peninsula—8,266 hectares known as the Five Bridge Lakes—took a step toward official wilderness protection Friday, when the province kicked off the public consultation period required for the designation. The land in question is mostly contiguous crown land bounded roughly by highways 103 and 333. It does not include a large parcel of HRM-owned land known as the Western Common (see map), but the city is supportive of the wilderness designation and has long-term plans to turn its land into a park.
The proposed wilderness area is bisected by the Old Coach Road, a rough gravel trail that once provided the only land connection between Halifax and the small communities on St. Margarets Bay. Under the proposal, that trail and a north-south fire road would remain open to all-terrain vehicles, but the other trails in the area, including the Bluff Wilderness Trail, would be off-limits for ATVs.
With wilderness protection recently given to Blue Mountain-Birch Cove Lakes, just to the north, the Five Bridge Lakes Wilderness would make the Halifax Metro area unique in Canada in terms of large wilderness areas so close to an urban area.
You can learn more about the proposal at thecoast.ca/bites; at displays at three public libraries (Tantallon, Spring Garden, Alderney Landing) through March and at an open house at the Dal Student Union, March 10, 11am-2pm. The public comment period closes April 30. —Tim Bousquet
This article appears in Feb 25 – Mar 3, 2010.
Hope all goes well!
The amount of real estate devoted to non-development this close to the HRM core is crazy! 20 years from now we’ll be able to better appreciate this commitment to wildernerness.
I’m a bit suspicious about all these “protected” areas. It seems like they always border private lands owned by wouldbe developers. The area starts out being conserved, then gradually turned into a park and finished off by high rise condos bordering it. Look at what’s been happening slowly to Long Lake. Soon it’ll become a public “park” probably with paved paths to accomodate joggers and dogwalkers in the shadow of those high-rise condos. So much for “conservation”. The city’s already planned new entrances to accomodate the proposed new development even before the development was approved.
I think you will find that all land is owned by someone. It is no surprise that developers own land within a 20 minute bicycle ride from downtown Halifax. As far as ‘conservation’ goes, I think you should have a closer look at the lands and their management plans. Sure, 100 years from now you’ll probably be able to drive a hover car through the parks mentioned, but for the time being I think there will be a balance between development of services within the parks (trails etc) and preservation of their natural characteristics.
With Long Lake you should probably have a look at how much is actually used. I’d say less than 90%.
Cranky: no offense, but what’s crazy is that we consider the amount of real estate devoted to parks and wilderness areas close to, or in, the core of HRM to actually be large. It’s not. It’s symbolically significant, but that’s about it.
Try this exercise – draw a few circles sometime, centered on downtown Halifax, that are chosen to just include some of these wilderness/park areas. Of all the area of enclosed land in those circles, how much is non-developable? Not much.
I guess it depends on what you definition of ‘large’ is. Long Lake Provincial Park is about the size of the the HRM Peninsula. I’m pretty sure Blue Mountain/Five Bridges totals more than the peninsula as well. I think that is a lot of land that will not be developed for some time.
This is supposedly a city. If you want wilderness outside your front door, move to the country. This much land that cannot be developed next to a city is absurd.