Wednesday, May 18, 2022

The Falcon Hears the Falconer

 


The Ecology Action Centre has a new tool in its kit, "The Madeleine Fund" named for the Peregrine Falcon who was among the first returnees to Fundy's shore in 1997.  The fund honors Kip McCurdy who was her protector and advocate.  Madeleine's descendents still nest in her chosen spot.


"This significant grant will be awarded annually to an EAC project whose work will strengthen and support Nova Scotia grassroots community advocacy in the fight to protect the communities and natural spaces, we all love and cherish."


This year, the Senior Leadership Team has chosen The Healthy Bay Network and our Marine team as the first recipients of the Madeleine Grant.  I have included a brief description of the work to which this grant will contribute from Simon Ryder-Burbidge, the Marine Campaign Coordinator at EAC:

 

We are working with our Healthy Bays Network community partners across Nova Scotia on the province’s long-anticipated five-year aquaculture regulatory review, now finally underway. With the EAC’s re-established seat on the Nova Scotia Aquaculture Regulatory Advisory Committee, we are able to provide coastal community members with up-to-date information on how the process is unfolding, and what to expect. Now, with the help of the Madeleine Grant, we are going further, developing a two-part event series in four coastal communities (Eastern Shore, Chester-St. Margaret’s area, Liverpool, and Digby area) to prepare for NSDFA consultations and ensure that community voices are no longer ignored.

 

Part one will gather a small group of community members at each location to discuss their key concerns about aquaculture, and target specific regulatory changes to address them – “kitchen table” style. Part two will entail open-to-the-public speaking events, covering industry plans for fish farm expansion in NS and the inconsistency of aquaculture policy between Canada’s east and west coasts at present. We’ll encourage regulatory review submissions and help each community remind the provincial government that open net-pen fish farms are still not welcome in our public waters. We hope that this two-pronged approach will make a splash impossible to ignore, paving the way for a transition away from sea-cage fish farms altogether in Atlantic Canada. The Madeleine Grant is helping to make it all possible.

 

Here is Madeleine sounding the alarm


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