The Islands Today: Overview
Mahone Bay is known throughout the world for its beautiful islands and shorelines. These islands provide:
- unique habitat to a variety of plants and animals,
- breathtaking natural landscapes, and
- traditional access for recreational activities.
The Mahone Bay islands provide a variety of habitats including: rocky shores, cobble and sand beaches, dune complexes, tidal flats, wet lands, and mature forests. These coastal habitats support a diversity of wildlife - marine and terrestrial - as well as distinct seabird and shore bird communities, including puffins, osprey, eagles, leach's storm petrels, razor bills, black guillemots, cormorants, and colonies of gulls, great blue herons, and terns. Roseate terns, which are listed as endangered by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC, 2003), were observed on some of the Mahone Bay islands
The islands of Mahone Bay are ecologically significant. These drumlin
islands provide unique habitats to support a diversity of species. Yet
there is increasing pressure on the ecological integrity of the islands
from human activity and development. Such activities can adversely
impact and degrade fragile coastal habitats and threaten native
wildlife species.
MICA has worked since 2003 to bring several of the islands under public ownership.