Protected Areas Data (DEL)

The Nova Scotia Department of Environment and Labour manages protected areas throughout
the province and this information is a crucial element of any tourism potential modelling project as
the aim is to develop natural areas for tourists while ensuring that sensitive areas remain largely
undisturbed and there is minimal environmental impact to the area. These areas are protected because
they are examples of unique or representative landforms, contain protected wildlife habitats,
or other
specific environmental or ecologically significant areas. These areas provide many recreational
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opportunities.
“Protected landscapes embody important cultural values; some of them reflect sustainable land
use practices. They are also important for research and education, and contribute significantly to local
and regional economies, most obviously from tourism and recreation.” Wilderness areas included in
this Department of Environment and Labour data are “used for scientific research, education and a
variety of recreation and nature-tourism related activities such as hiking, canoeing, sea-kayaking,
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sportfishing and hunting.” This protected area data comprises two main streams which are
wilderness (protected ) areas and nature reserves, both being provincially protected and managed.
This data was created from provincial boundaries of crown land parcels as determined by the survey
division of the Department of Natural Resources. In terms of capability with other data this
information is pretty reasonable having a scale of 1:10,000 with a creation date falling within the last
10 years. Of this data, the wilderness data is acknowledged as being the more accurate data due to
some overlay problems with the nature reserves.164 This data appears to overlay nicely with existing
data and an example can be seen on the next page as figure 17.