Blue Mountain - Birch Cove Lakes
A Wilderness Legacy for a Growing City:Your Help Is Still Needed
Photo Credit: Chris Miller
In 2006, the Halifax Regional Municipality passed a 25-year regional plan to guide future development in the city and to identify green space for the citizens of Halifax. That plan identifies the Blue Mountain – Birch Cove Lakes wilderness as a prime site for a new regional park and states that the city will work over time to acquire those lands for conservation. The area is significant for its vast forests, interconnected lakes, and recreational opportunities only 10km from downtown Halifax. It also contains rare arctic-alpine plants and habitat for the endangered mainland moose.
Now, a development proposal is making its way through City Hall proposing high- and medium-density residential and commercial development for these same lands. Please take a moment to let Mayor Peter Kelly know how you feel.
In your submission, you may want to remind the mayor that the regional plan identifies Blue Mountain – Birch Cove Lakes as a site for a future wilderness park and what’s at stake is the integrity of the entire regional plan. Earlier this year, the provincial government designated Crown lands in the Blue Mountain – Birch Cove Lakes region as a protected wilderness area. The City needs to keep up its end of the bargain.
Located only minutes from downtown Halifax, the Blue Mountain - Birch Cove Lakes wilderness boasts a wild and rugged landscape covered with magnificent forests, inter-connected lakes, and wetlands. It's an outdoor enthusiast's dream, with incredible hiking opportunities and the only canoe loop near the city where multiple lakes can be paddled in a single day without back-tracking.
Under increasing threat from uncontrolled suburban sprawl, backroom deals to swap and dispose Crown land, and a proposed 4-lane highway, the future of the Blue Mountain - Birch Cove Lakes wilderness was, until very recently, quite bleak. It was destined to become just another wild place near the city to be devoured by more and more development and poor urban planning. That is, until the citizens of Halifax and beyond woke up to the problem and, one-by-one, began to stand up and demand that this ecological gem be protected forever, for everyone.
This groundswell of support has helped bring Blue Mountain - Birch Cove Lakes back from the brink of destruction and has resulted in two major commitments to protect the area by two levels of government:
"A group of outdoor enthusiasts at the top of Blue Mountain Hill, September 2004". (Photo credit: Raymond Plourde)
Province commits 1350 hectares of public land for protection
In October 2007, the Provincial government committed to protecting 1,350 hectares of public land in the Blue Mountain - Birch Cove Lakes wilderness as a legally-designated protected wilderness area under the Wilderness Areas Protection Act. This will become one of Canada's largest near-urban wilderness protected areas and will be twenty times larger than Halifax's Point Pleasant Park.
click for map
In April 2009, the provincial government followed through on its promise and now 1,312 hectares of public lands in Blue Mountain - Birch Cove Lakes are officially protected. This designation prevents development, road building, clearcutting, and open-pit mining, among other things.
The Halifax Regional Municipality had committed to acquiring lands adjacent to the Blue Mountain - Birch Cove Lakes Wilderness Area for the creation of a new regional park. This commitment is contained in the policies and bylaws of the comprehensive 25-year Regional Municipal Planning Strategy, approved by Regional Council in August 2006 after several years of public consultation.