By Mark Squibb
October 6, 2023 Edition
Some details have been clarified about the Ragged Beach land reserve announced by the Province this week to protect the puffin colony off Witless Bay.
For the last decade, special interest groups and private landowners have butted heads over land between Mullowney’s Lane and an area inland from Ragged Beach.
In a press release, the Province said it was establishing a new land reserve “in the area of Ragged Beach in order to further protect the Witless Bay Ecological Reserve bird populations from potential impacts of future development.”
The release noted that 82 percent of all North America’s puffins breed around the coastline of Newfoundland and Labrador, and the Witless Bay Ecological Reserve, located one to two kilometres offshore from the Ragged Beach area, is home to North America’s largest colony of Atlantic Puffins with over 600,000 breeding birds calling the area home.
The release said as a result of the reserve status, new development of Crown land in that area will be restricted to ensure light pollution in the area is minimized and protections are enhanced for the Atlantic Puffin and Leach’s Storm Petrel populations of the nearby Witless Bay Ecological Reserve.
Asked how the new reserve will affect private landowners, Mayor Trevor Croft and Deputy Mayor Lorna Yard directed questions to town staff.
A request for details was also sent to the Department of Fisheries, Forestry and Agriculture, such as whether the dimensions of the reserve have been determined and how the reserve may affect private landowners in the area.
In an e-mail reply, staff informed the Irish Loop Post the new land reserve is 75 hectares and is currently being uploaded to the Provincial Land Use Atlas. Staff also said that private land is not included in the reserve. And while development will be restricted, the Minister may issue grants, leases, licences and easements where required on an urgent basis for the public good, if a person has acquired interest under section 36 of the Lands Act, if an application for Crown land was received prior to September 26, 2023 ( the date the reserve came into effect) or for improvements or maintenance of the East Coast Trail network.
The area has long been contentious. A council two terms ago tried to implement a 99-hectare reserve there and was accused of trying to prohibit private landowners from accessing their properties. The council that succeeded them in 2017, passed a motion throwing out the plans for such a reserve. More recently, the new slate of councillors elected in September 2021, themselves passed a motion overturning that previous motion, in effect reinstating the plan for a Town-initiated Land Reserve.
