Leah Alexander and Adam Wilkins of Explore Lorneville stand in front of the newly-rejuvenated Musquash Head Lighthouse.
It’s a big day for New Brunswickers who want to take advantage of the coastal trails along the Bay of Fundy.
On Tuesday, the Nature Conservancy of Canada announced the acquisition of three new parcels of land, totaling 275 acres, for protection along the Bay of Fundy and the revitalization of the Musquash Head Lighthouse in partnership with Explore Lorneville.
Explore Lorneville also announced the opening of the “Lorneville Link” trail system Tuesday. The 20-kilometer pathway ties the Split Rock Trail to the Prince of Wales community and connects Black Beach to the Five Fathom Hole trails.
Funds to realize the project were raised by the NCC and Explore Lorneville, as well as a $75,000 donation from the federal government’s Natural Heritage Conservation Program.
The newly-conserved lands will help expand the NCC’s reach around the Musquash Estuary, the only federally marine-protected area in the province.
Paula Noel is the New Brunswick Program Director with the NCC. She says they began working to help conserve the estuary 20 years ago because of its ecological significance.
“This estuary is one of the last large intact healthy estuaries along the Bay of Fundy that hasn’t been developed,” she said. “It’s pretty much all-natural habitat: forest, wetland, beaches around this estuary, including some salt marshes.”
She says around 80 per cent of the bay’s salt marshes have disappeared since European settlers arrived in the area.
Over the past year, Noel says the NCC has definitely seen an increase in citizens getting involved in taking care of the natural environment.
“Areas where there is accessibility and trails, we are definitely seeing an increase in use,” she said. “With that, we are working with communities and volunteers to ensure that areas are being accessed safely for the people using them, but also safe for the wildlife that we’re trying to protect as well.”
Explore Lorneville’s lighthouse rejuvenation project
The partnership with Explore Lorneville, a community group that was established to help revitalize hiking trails and the area around Musquash Head, helped bring in one of the three land parcels – a 92-acre stretch at Musquash Head, which includes the lighthouse.
Adam Wilkins and Leah Alexander make up two-thirds of the Explore Lorneville committee. They originally got involved by working to take care of the lighthouse and maintain the nearby trails.
“We’ve been involved in this area for the last six or seven years just with the hiking trails,” Alexander said. “The lighthouse was the next logical step. It needed some work, some TLC for sure.”
Originally, Explore Lorneville put out a call to the community to help raise up to $35,000 to help restore the deteriorating lighthouse, improve nearby trails, and to put money away for future maintenance.
But the campaign wound up dramatically exceeding their goals, with around 300 individual donors contributing, thanks largely to the wide reach of the NCC.
“(Explore Lorneville is) an extremely small group and this is a volunteer thing,” Alexander said. “The NCC has everything set up for people to be able to make online donations, give tax receipts, all those things that we just didn’t have the capacity to do.”
She cited the NCC’s national reach for donors and donations, which included bringing in the J.T. Clark Family Foundation, which matched all donations for a two-month period last year.
“It was huge and put us over the top, and then things just took off from there,” Wilkins said.
