This summer (2021), Replant.ca Environmental was able to assist with some tree planting work in Terra Nova National Park. Terra Nova is located on the east coast of Newfoundland, covering several of the inlets along Bonavista Bay. If you're trying to drive there, it's just over an hour south of Gander International Airport, or slightly over two hours north of St. John's. Think about the name. Terra means "land" in Latin, and "Nova" means "new." So basically, it's very close to being a Latin version of the name of the province.
Newfoundland officially became Canada's tenth province in 1949. Up to that point, it was usually under colonial rule (with one twenty-six year period as a Dominion). An interesting bit of trivia is that up until 1947, Newfoundland was still issuing its own coinage, obviously distinct from Canadian coins. After Newfoundland joined Canada, it was only eight more years before Terra Nova was created, in 1957. Terra Nova covers almost 400 square kilometers, so it's larger than most of Canada's provincial or municipal parks.
Newfoundland eventually became known as the province of Newfoundland & Labrador, after this name change was added to the Canadian constitution in 1981.
As noted by Wikipedia, Terra Nova protects the Eastern Island Boreal Forest natural region. This region covers most of the island of Newfoundland (east of Deer Lake), and is characterized predominantly by black spruce trees, with pockets of balsam fir, white pine, mountain ash, tamarack, maple, and some other deciduous species.
Most of Terra Nova consists of rolling hills covered with forests. Visitors will also discover exposed rock faces, bogs, ponds, and wetlands. Here's a photo showing part of the park which is in the process of regenerating. You can see some juvenile spruce among older trunks of dead trees, and a ground layer covered with moss and Labrador tea vegetation:
Here's a graphic (courtesy of Google Earth) showing the location of the park:
Terra Nova has two campgrounds at Newman Sound and Malady Head. In addition, there are also tons of back-country camping options, accessible by hiking, kayaking, or canoeing. If you'd like some further information about reserving camping sites, start here:
www.pc.gc.ca/en/pn-np/nl/terranova/activ
Our Regional Director of [Newfoundland] Operations, John Moran, was able to send us a couple photos of the work done in TNNP in 2021:
This year (2021) was the first year that our organization did any work in this beautiful national park. We hope and expect that we will be able to make further contributions in the future. We're truly excited about this project, being one of our most unique and beautiful project sites to date!
You can see more photos of our 2021 tree planting work in our public 2021 Planting Photos folder on Dropbox.
We'd especially like to thank John Gosse (the Nature Legacy Ecologist) and his staff for their hospitality and support while we were on site. We definitely look forward to returning in 2022 to continue any additional work that can be arranged.
Edit: We were able to continue our work at Terra Nova in 2022. If you'd like to learn more about that work, visit this link:
replant-environmental.blogspot.com/2023/02/tree-planting-at-terra-nova-national.html
Jonathan "Scooter" Clark
Replant.ca Environmental is a Canadian company that plants trees for carbon capture and builds community forests. We also plant trees in national, provincial, and municipal public parks to mitigate damage from wildfires, storms, insects, and forest diseases. We operate thanks to numerous small contributions from the general public, in addition to larger project sponsorships from businesses and corporations around the world. If you'd like to learn how to show your support, visit our donations page. Even if you aren't able to make a contribution, we very much appreciate when people are able to share our posts or our website link on social media, to help spread the word about the work that we're doing!
To learn more about the various species that we plant, visit the conifers page or the deciduous (hardwoods) page on our website. Thanks so much for your interest!
Incidentally, our organization is often seeking additional land for our carbon capture projects. Please visit this link if you might know of a recently-harvested property that we could rebuild into a permanent legacy forest.
No comments:
Post a Comment