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Feb 18, 2005
Golf course expansion threatens to sink Frenchman’s Cove Provincial Park

St. John’s, NL -- The Protected Areas Association of Newfoundland and Labrador (PAA) condemns the proposed expansion of the Grande Meadows Golf Course in Frenchman’s Cove Provincial Park, a development which threatens to sink the already seriously compromised park.

“Almost half of the park, 23 of 51 hectares, was ‘greened over’ to make way for the original nine hole course in 1991. Now they want more and we are left to wonder when is this going to stop?” questioned Chris Hogan of the Protected Areas Association. “When are developers going to understand that parks are not land banks for development?”

The development proposal, publicized Feb 17, 2005, requests an additional five hectares of land be leased to the Grande Meadows Golf Course Association. The Provincial Parks Act was amended in 1997 to set a cap of five hectares on any commercial licence or lease within a provincial park. Ironically, this step to strengthen the Act was taken in response to the original lease of 23 hectares granted in 1991 to develop the nine hole course in Frenchman’s Cove Provincial Park. Since the nine hole course opened in 1995, the Golf Course Association has made several attempts to expand the course to make it a full 18 holes.

“This development proposal certainly seems to contravene the spirit of the Act, if not its legal limits as well. With its active 23 hectares lease for the front nine holes, the Golf Course Association is already well above the acceptable five hectares development limit. They should be forced to move the existing nine holes out of the park to come into line with the Act, but now they’ve turned around and asked for more park land,” stated Hogan.

The PAA has grave concerns about whether such a small park, already significantly altered from its natural condition, can continue to serve its intended functions of ecological protection and education. Excluding the existing golf course, campground, comfort station, parking area, cabin development, and playground, there remains only six to seven hectares of land in the park that is in a natural state. The developers are now requesting five of those. One has to wonder what is going to be left to protect in the park.

The PAA strongly encourages park supporters from the Burin Peninsula and across the province to express their concerns surrounding this proposal to the Minister of Environment and Conservation as soon as possible.

The PAA is a non-profit environmental organisation dedicated to biodiversity conservation and sustainable resource use in Newfoundland and Labrador. The PAA advocates that protected areas such as provincial parks are the cornerstone of sustainable development and their ecological integrity should not be compromised.

For further information:

Chris Hogan
Protected Areas Association of Newfoundland and Labrador
tel: (709) 726-2603
email: chris.hogan@nf.aibn.com

It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment.
~Ansel Adams