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CBC
2 days ago
- General
- CBC
Riverview Park gets conservation status preserving it for future generations
Social Sharing Daniel DeLong was a Grade 12 student at Riverview High School in 2011 when his environmental science teacher encouraged him to get involved in his community. He never expected his class project — a proposal to turn the Mill Creek site into a nature park — would become a reality. At the time, DeLong said, subdivisions were popping up in that part of Riverview. "Mill Creek had been long recognized as a special place because of the reservoir there and the natural habitat right on the edge of the municipality," he said. "I think my public presentation helped to highlight how much public interest there was in the site." Since then, DeLong, the chair of the Friends of Mill Creek volunteer advisory committee, has been part of the push to have much of the 330-acre park preserved for good. The Town of Riverview recently announced an agreement with the province that will designate the park as a conservation area. "Now we know that it has this type of special conservation so that it can be enjoyed by future generations as well as protected status for all of the wildlife and diversity that inhabit that space," said DeLong. He said the designation will ensure Mill Creek's long-term preservation from excessive future development or change. It does not affect how people currently use the area for recreational activities such as hiking, dog walking, mountain biking and snowshoeing. "You can still do the same activities that have been permitted there," he said. Jennifer Dingman, executive director of the not-for-profit Fundy Biosphere Region, helped the park achieve its conservation status. She says there are a number of ways to designate land in New Brunswick for conservation. The first is the Protected Natural Areas Act, which allows the provincial government to protect Crown land. The second allows not-for-profits such as the Nature Trust of New Brunswick to designate privately owned land for conservation, and the final option is the one being used by Riverview. "It allows landowners like municipalities to develop management plans, put in regulations that will withstand the test of time and change of council and change of staff." Dingman said the Fundy Biosphere Region is also working with other municipalities to help them designate land for conservation. "We are intending to be able to make some announcements in the other municipalities shortly." Even though Mill Creek park is now considered as a conservation area, Dingman said, the town will continue to manage it with the environment in mind. For example, a pollinator garden in the park will have guidelines for staff to follow. "They would need to choose native species or make sure they're not using pesticides or herbicides," Dingman said. "This is meant to be left more natural and to keep the biodiversity in the nature that's there."
The Guardian
14-05-2025
- The Guardian
‘Time slows down in Lastovo': I may just have found Croatia's most unspoilt archipelago
The sound of a baby crying echoes eerily in the night sky, seemingly coming from the uninhabited Zaklopatica islet that faces the terrace of our holiday rental in Lastovo. 'Do you think that's a bird?' I ask my husband. 'At this time of night? Doubt it,' he says. The Guardian's journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more. Fast forward a couple of days and we're in a park ranger's motorboat bumping around the far-flung Lastovo archipelago in the Adriatic. All its 46 islands (including the main Lastovo island), islets and reefs were declared a nature park in 2006. By luck, I'm with the ornithologist whose discovery of the nesting sites of some of the Mediterranean's most endangered birds – yelkouan and Scopoli's shearwaters – was instrumental in Lastovo getting the official protection it deserves. Between Robert Crnković, a retired army officer turned full-time ornithologist who surveys the birds here several times a year, and Alexandra Horvat, Lastovo nature park's head ranger, I'm getting a crash course in the region's birdlife and biodiversity. Robert points to our right. 'Oh look – shearwaters! You can see them sniffing the water. They're searching for food.' He mentions that yelkouan and Scopoli's shearwaters are breeding on the islet within sight of my holiday apartment. 'Maybe at night you can hear them calling like a baby crying … ' That's one mystery solved. Here on one of Croatia's most remote inhabited islands – next stop, Italy – I am uncovering Lastovo's secrets. Time slows down on that terrace as I watch go by in Zaklopatica Bay – fishers cleaning their catches, older ladies chortling after a boozy lunch, young boys driving and mooring their boats. Ladders and steps along the quayside turn the bay into one giant swimming pool, where I jump into impossibly clear waters. On the horizon is bigger, busier Korčula. On the northern coast, wooded cliffs and the shearwater-inhabited islet give Zaklopatica bay plenty of natural shelter. Three waterside restaurants do a roaring trade feeding the yachting crowd. Among measures introduced to protect the marine ecosystem, particularly the posidonia seagrass, is a system of 'ecological mooring', using buoys instead of anchors. Boats need an entrance ticket to enter the archipelago too, while rangers look out for illegal fishing and diving, and maintain 125 miles (200km) of footpaths and hiking trails on a hilly island that's 70% covered in forests. I'm quickly getting a sense of Lastovo's fragility, and the battle to keep it from going the way of other parts of Croatia's overdeveloped coast and islands. Despite its natural park status, there are fears things could change. Diana Magdić in the tourist office worries the protection may not be enough, and estimates that Lastovo has about 10 years before unscrupulous developers exhaust other areas and try to do the same here. For now, the island remains gloriously unspoilt. Lastovo town lies a few hundred metres inland from the coast – this distance was useful centuries ago, when marauding pirates brought violence and fear to locals' lives. The village's 15th- and 16th-century stone houses with colourful shutters sit alongside vineyards, olive groves, orchards and market gardens whose produce ends up on local restaurant plates when it's not being bartered among neighbours. A squiggling road leads us downhill from the village to pretty Lučica Bay, where fishers' cottages squeeze around a bay too narrow for anything bigger than a dinghy. At compact Konoba Lučica, we sit at one of the restaurant's two outside tables with a romantic sea view. We dine on grilled squid served by owner-chef Ante Kovačev, who fell in love with this spot after being stranded here on a sailing trip and left his home in Šibenik to set up this enchanting pint-sized place. Sign up to The Traveller Get travel inspiration, featured trips and local tips for your next break, as well as the latest deals from Guardian Holidays after newsletter promotion Meanwhile, on the south coast, a giant comma-shaped peninsula of scrub-covered cliffs curves around the calm waters of Skrivena Luka, literally meaning hidden harbour. Here we find Porto Rosso, a restaurant and nautical centre whose numerous terraces hover over a pine-shaded beach. Although it's mid-June, the summer season hasn't kicked off yet, so we have an absurd amount of empty space in which to lounge after a satisfying lunch of seafood risotto. Gazing at the sea and swimming in transparent waters, we allow the afternoon to slip by in total relaxation. Lastovo does this to people. When we decamp from Zaklopatica and cross the little bridge to Prežba, the archipelago's only other inhabited island, I immediately fall in love with the huge flower-filled terrace in our roomy apartment overlooking Malo Lago Bay in tiny Pasadur village. The atmosphere is less yachtie than Zaklopatica, and the peaceful bay looks more like a channel, flanked by wooded hills. 'You'll have to drag me from here,' I warn my husband. Pine-shaded coves are tucked into Prežba's indented coast, also pockmarked by old naval tunnels and bunkers from the days before 1988, when Lastovo was a military base and closed to tourists. Although the beaches beckon, we are again seduced by the ease of jumping into the clean waters from the sunny quayside. It takes five hours to get to Lastovo from Split via two ferries, and three hours on a catamaran from Dubrovnik (leaving you reliant on the island's sole bus that is actually a minivan). It won't suit everybody (thank goodness), especially drunk partygoers from Hvar who get on the wrong boat and wonder where all the cocktail bars and nightclubs are (answer: there aren't any, and yes, this does happen). For Diana in the tourist office, who, like Alexandra Horvat, originally came from Zagreb, Lastovo harks back to 1980s Yugoslavia, 'when every tourist was a guest, a friend'. Lastovo just made a new friend. Studios in Apartments Marija in Zaklopatica from £60 a night (minimum two-night stay). Studios in Villa Agata in Pasadur from £64 a night. Ferries from Split to Ubli, Lastovo, run three times a day with Jadrolinija, and passenger-only catamarans run once a day from Dubrovnik to Ubli with TP Line
