Sierra Club Atlantic is a vibrant grassroots organization that empowers people to protect, restore, and enjoy a healthy safe planet. We are your chapter of Canada’s only national grassroots environmental organization, working to bring your community’s concerns to the attention of regional and national leaders. Together, we are a credible, influential voice, working to make a better world a reality.
What are we up to?
The Atlantic Chapter works through education and action to green the economy and protect the environment. We engage in projects designed to connect children to nature, protect wildlife and wild spaces, and to offer solutions to climate change.
Tuesday, July 22 was the first day of the Wild Child program on Prince Edward Island. I awoke bright and early, and was soon on my way to the Campus Kids Daycare at the UPEI campus. I arrived during snack-time and was given homemade biscuits with butter. An excellent start to my first day.
The Sierra Club Canada Foundation and Save Our Seas and Shores Coalition (SOSS) are offering their support for the Innu, Maliseet, and Mi’gmaq First Nations of Eastern Canada in their call for a moratorium on oil and gas exploration and development in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
As with many oil and gas projects across the country, what we are seeing here is a government willing to run roughshod over rights of indigenous peoples to get to fossil fuels,” according to John Bennett, National Programs Director of Sierra Club.
“We are proud to stand in solidarity with the Innu, Maliseet, and Mi’gmaq First Nations in calling for a moratorium on oil and gas in the Gulf.”
Scientists studying the blue whale in the Gulf of St Lawrence are reporting alarmingly low calving rates from this critically endangered species, says the Sierra Club Canada Foundation. The Sierra Club recently launched a campaign to safeguard the blue whale's critical habitat in the Gulf.
The Mingan Island Cetacean Study (MICS) is a non-profit research organization located on the Gulf of St Lawrence's northern shore and they were the first group to begin long term study of marine mammals in the Gulf. Since their founding in 1979, this group has followed blue whale populations in eastern Canada, the Sea of Cortez and in the waters of Iceland.
See an electric vehicle next to you on the road and you might not distinguish it from any other gas guzzler confronting rush hour traffic. But drive one yourself...and you won't soon shake the experience.
Electric vehicles (EVs) are powered entirely by their onboard batteries and therefore have no tailpipe. No combustion engine vibrates under their hood and no gears need shifted, giving these machines an unrivalled smoothness. When faced with stop signs, red lights or drive-thrus, EVs don't expend their power idling - they are incapable of idling.
But for all their blessings, EVs have their drawbacks. Their batteries have limited range, they can't be fuelled at the pump and for the time being, they cost more than your average gasoline vehicle. However, professor of mechanical engineering at Dalhousie University, Lukas Swan, said these drawbacks are being left in the dust.
Discover McNabs like never before, with Waterfront Development and Halifax Diverse
This unique, one time event offers you the opportunity to visit McNabs Island, receive two 1-hour guided walks by expert historians and naturalists, and 3 hours of free time on the island. Sponsored by Waterfront Development and hosted by Halifax Diverse, we are as excited to explore the island as you are!
Get your tickets on Eventbrite!
Give us your best shot for the Halifax Goes Wild photo contest!
Show off your photo skills and the city’s green spaces in our photo contest, with prizes provided by Atlantic Photo Supply. Here's the answers to all your questions about this contest!
“What kind of photos are you looking for?” – Photos should depict a green space within the municipality. This could be a park, a beach, your own backyard, or more. Photos can have people in them (with their consent), or not, it’s up to you!
Send us a tweet with the following text:
My @HfxDiverse #HalifaxGoesWild photo entry:
Then attach your photo and tell us your name, the name of the photo (if you wish) and when/where the photo was taken. We'll contact you through Twitter if you win!
Unfortunately there's no way to make a fancy button to do this automatically :(
Thanks for entering!
It's been a few nights since Nova Scotia's independent fracking review passed through Halifax, addressing a frustrated and distrusting crowd of concerned citizens. These brave PhDs stood before hundreds of people and presented some unpopular conclusions...on an even less popular topic.
Fracking - the controversial process of fracturing shale rock deep underground using a toxic mixture of chemicals in order to retrieve bubbles of natural gas. We've become a profoundly desperate people, haven't we?
The public meeting was held in a lecture hall at King's College. Some people from the audience spoke out of turn, while others simply shouted over the panelists trying to deliver their findings. I was caught between sympathy for the panelists and stark agreeance with the hecklers.
Definitions
Each blue whale has a unique pattern of spots of its back, like a fingerprint or a nametag. These spots allow researchers to identify each whale as either a newcomer, or an old friend.
The Mingan Island Cetacean Study (MICS) is a non-profit research organization located on the Gulf of St Lawrence's northern shore and they were the first group to begin long term study of marine mammals in the Gulf. Since their founding in 1979, this group has followed blue whale populations in eastern Canada, the Sea of Cortez and in the waters of Iceland.
MICS has discovered something troubling in the northwest Atlantic blue whale population. Of the 475 individual whales they've identified since their genesis in 1979, only 22 have been calves. This suggests a frighteningly low calving rate for a population already swimming on the brink.
One small step for community gardens, one giant leap for Halifax at large.
There are 11 community gardens in the Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM), public spaces in which people can grow their own food, to lower the grocery bill, to satisfy their need for local produce or to put their insatiable green thumbs to work. Thanks to a progressive move by municipal council, these soil enthusiasts can now sell their hard earned fruits and veggies to the public.
Moneys earned from these sales are not pocketed by the growers, however. According to the new municipal law, all earnings must be used for the benefit of the municipality or the community gardens themselves.
"This is a major change for the city," said David Foster, program coordinator with Halifax Diverse, an initiative aiming to connect the public with urban nature. "It adds legitimacy to urban orchards and gardens...and makes them the urban equivalent to a real farm."
A long awaited roundabout is going to mean the end of some long standing trees on the Halifax Common.
Work is beginning this week on the conversion of the North Park and Cunard Street intersection into a roundabout and will causes significant changes to the surrounding area. Most noticeably this will involve reshaping the intersection into a traffic circle, including the use of some land that was formerly green space on the North Common.
"The Atlantic Salmon and the blue whales are both very precious creatures to our nations," said Chief Claude Jeannotte of Gespeg, Quebec. He spoke in Halifax on behalf of these two struggling species Wednesday, July 16.
Jeannotte was accompanied by four other First Nations chiefs from across Atlantic Canada, all from communities dependent on the, "rich bounty of the Gulf," in the words of Chief P.J Prosper, representing the Migmaq of Nova Scotia. Together they spoke against exploratory drilling at the Old Harry Prospect, located in the Gulf of St Lawrence 80 km off Newfoundland's west coast and 460 metres underwater.
The Old Harry prospect is expected to be drilled in 2015 or 2016, according to the oil and gas company Corridor Resources which presently holds an exploratory license in the region.
There's been a moratorium on deep water wells for over a decade on PEI. It was established in 2002 because of major drought conditions that year, linked to the overuse of groundwater by these wells.
They pose a danger to the Island in particular because its residents depends heavily on groundwater. For example, the city of Charlottetown runs entire rivers dry with its water consumption; Winter River hasn't flowed for several summers now. Clearly this is a delicate water table.
When the PEI Potato Board requested the moratorium be lifted in 2012, all fingers were pointed at Cavendish Farms as the motivator behind this request. Potatoes are a thirsty crop and if Cavendish wanted higher yields, they needed to exploit groundwater.
Did you know that Saturday, June 21st is National Aboriginal Day? Halifax is going to be the site of some fantastic opportunities to learn about indigenous traditions, culture, and knowledge! You can learn more about the day's events on the Aboriginal Day Live website.
Presentation to the PEI Legislative Standing Committee on
Agriculture, Environment, Energy and Forestry
considering the moratorium on high capacity (deep) water wells for agriculture irrigation
PEI Sierra Club (Atlantic Chapter of Sierra Club Canada)
Tony Reddin
June 12, 2014.
K'JIPUKTUK (HALIFAX) - The Ecology Action Centre, Sierra Club Atlantic Canada, and Council of Canadians express their solidarity with Pictou Landing First Nation and neighbouring communities in their fight to defend and clean up their home waters.
“The ongoing pollution and contamination of a once pristine coastal estuary and beach is a disgrace. It is absolutely the responsibility of the province of Nova Scotia to clean up this site once and for all” says Angela Giles, Council of Canadians.
By Zack Metcalfe
The single greatest challenge in my life has always been avoiding despair when facing the mistakes of the last century. Several months ago I read a book called Here On Earth, by Tim Flannery, and in one chapter he describes a terrible mistake made long before I was born. The spent nuclear reactors of Russian power plants were dumped into the Arctic Ocean. Time and tidal forces will eventually penetrate their casings and cause unimaginable harm to the oceans.
Problems like this are beyond my power to rectify, as so many of the world's problems are. I imagine diving into those icy depths and hauling each reactor back onto land, but this is of course ridiculous; perhaps it's a coping mechanism.
By Zack Metcalfe
Even now, after several reviews of fracking in this country, we aren't certain what it's doing to our air and water.
One such review, conducted by the Council of Canadian Academies (CCA), discovered the body of research into hydraulic fracturing was incomplete - there were no reliable studies on the environmental impacts.
There were reports of people lighting their tap water on fire and gas wells leaking methane into the atmosphere, but for all the panel's efforts, they couldn't deliver anything conclusive. The research simply hasn't been done.
In their conclusion they say, "authoritative data about potential [environmental] impacts are currently neither sufficient, nor conclusive."
Do you know the impact that gardening with native plants can have on local wildlife? Bill Freedman does! As a professor of ecology and long-time practitioner of the principles of naturalization, he wants to spread the word about the benefits of using native plants in your garden. Walking his own talk, Dr. Freedman naturalized his own yard years ago, curating a collection of native plants where a lawn once dwelled, now home to a vibrant collection of greenery, exploding with colour throughout the various growing seasons.
