As many of you know, HNH partnered with the St. Margaret’s Bay Stewardship Association to do a pilot project workshop for our new initiative SHORE UP NOVA SCOTIA (SUNS) in early August this year. (SUNS is a rolling series of Living Shoreline workshops, “teaching plant-based strategies to combat coastal erosion one community at a time”.) We were delighted to have an enthusiastic group of 25 volunteers join us to do some work ‘shoring up’ the property at the Gilbert’s home in Ingramport. Great fun was had by all at the pilot weekend, and the take away of knowledge and hands-on training was appreciated by everyone present.
Post-Dorian check up
Rosemarie and SUNS Program Manager Lisa Cochrane made a post-Dorian check up of the work everyone did at the Gilbert property. All but 2 of 50 beach grasses had survived the storm and were thriving. The roots had attached and nearly all resisted Rosmarie’s firm tug. Likewise, all of the shrubs planted on the upland area were growing well. All 50 of them.
Open for business this spring!
We have had some very encouraging meetings with government officials about SUNS and over the next several months we shall be finalizing our funding applications for public subsidy for our project. We hope to unveil the new SUNS website in spring 2020, and launch the program as being open for business at that time. Community groups and municipalities will be able to book one of our Living Shoreline workshops – much like the pilot – according to the available slots in the SUNS workshop schedule. More details on how this will work in the spring!
Nova Scotia Federation of Municipalities
Recently Rosmarie and Lisa attended the annual gathering of the Nova Scotia Federation of Municipalities in the Westin Hotel in Halifax. It was great exposure for the SUNS concept, and the response from mayors, deputy mayors, councillors and CAOs was very favourable. We feel that it’s important that municipal leaders buy into the SUNS workshops in their area, and to do this they must be given the chance to budget for the financial commitment we will require of them for each subsidized workshop.
Sharing our expertise and Green Shores
We are already thinking about how to share the SUNS niche expertise with other Atlantic provinces. We recently attended a meeting in Moncton, New Brunswick with many of our climate change adaptation and erosion mitigation space colleagues – including DG Blair from Green shores in British Columbia – to discuss developing exciting Living Shoreline-related initiatives for Atlantic Canada. And on the agenda in early December is a property site tour of 5 selected HNH Living Shoreline projects on PEI, for interested stakeholders there to see how our work can make a difference to their particular erosion challenges.
All in all we are heartened by the growing interest in SHORE UP NOVA SCOTIA, and we look forward to next summer when we officially roll out the inaugural series.
For more information on SUNS and our pilot project, click here.
Lisa Cochrane
Program Director
SHORE UP NOVA SCOTIA