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“In a world where there’s decency and honesty and integrity, it would be unheard of that a provincial natural environment park would have to defend itself for its own status,” said local advocate Nadine Hunt. "It should be unheard of that anything like this would even be brought up.”

Nature Nova Scotia and the Ecology Action Centre want the government to close loopholes and short-circuit future development proposals like recent ones at Owls Head and West Mabou Beach.

Nature Nova Scotia & the Ecology Action Centre are urging the provincial government to amend and strengthen the Provincial Parks Act.

“All it seemingly requires is a little bit of language change, wording to strengthen the (Provincial) Parks Act so that certain activities are just not permitted in certain parks," says Nadine Hunt, who has had to fight multiple times to keep West Mabou Beach Provincial Park protected. "I don’t think it’s a major ask, I don’t think it’s controversial and I don’t think it’s that difficult to do. I don’t know why the will is not there to do it.”

Those who opposed a proposed golf course at West Mabou Beach Provincial Park say the Provincial Parks Act needs to be updated.

"West Mabou Beach made evident that the regulations surrounding the appropriate use of provincial parks are unclear and, thus, insufficient. This requires an immediate response from government given the extraordinary value of these public assets and the public harm caused by the ambiguous wording of the legislation."

“The provincial government now needs to quickly amend the provincial parks legislation to provide greater protection for our provincial parks, and to reduce the broad discretion that is built into the act that developers keep trying to exploit,” said Plourde.

The Ecology Action Centre says the Provincial Parks Act has too many loopholes: "What we see is that developers, if they get a 'no' from a particular government, like Cabot did with the last Liberal government, then they wait for a change of government and try again, and they will keep trying until the Act is strengthened," said Raymond Plourde, Senior Wilderness Coordinator at the EAC.

Letter to the Editor by Ian Guppy Saltwire - Feb. 28, 2023 Letter originally published here Parks have been much in the news lately and the Herald’s February 7th story “ Developments that are changing Dartmouth ” has me thinking how tragically ironic it is for the word “park” to be exploited by developers. Examples of this misuse include The Parks of Lake Charles, The Parks of West Bedford, Shannon Park and others. In a related case of proposed exploitation by developers, pe