Since the Nature Trust began our work more than 30 years ago, we have saved irreplaceable wild spaces from end to end of Nova Scotia using a strategic, science-driven approach to identify and protect the most threatened, unique and significant natural areas. These conservation lands will be protected — forever.

These lands are all ecologically significant, and their securement is part of a long-term strategic conservation plan to ensure that our limited resources are used most effectively to protect nature.  We build on a broad knowledge base of the ecological features of Nova Scotia, data-driven conservation planning exercises, and long-term engagement with the larger conservation community, scientists, government agencies, and community members. Together, these help us identify geographic Focus Areas to prioritize our conservation efforts.

Browse our detailed interactive map to explore each of our conservation lands across Nova Scotia! Click on individual sites to see a description of the property, how and when it was protected, images and video of what it looks like, and access information for those lands where visitors are welcome to explore.

Explore our Focus Areas. Learn more about why each Focus Area is important for our conservation work, as well as the lands and assemblages that are included. You’ll also be able to see recent news and updates specific to that Focus Area.

We occasionally also protect lands outside of our established focus areas, if they are determined to be a conservation priority.

Our mission is to make sure that Nova Scotia’s nature, with its incredible diversity and unique features, will live on. In order to accomplish this, we protect land that promotes and conserves:

• Rare and unique species and habitats – We target lands that harbour rare and unique species and their associated habitats. With the rapid loss of species around the world and escalating threats to the natural conditions they need to survive, it is critical to protect their remaining refuges before they are lost forever.
• Ecological Integrity – We work to protect land that contains intact and functioning ecological systems.
• Biodiversity – We protect areas that are important for provincial biodiversity, including rare species, rich or diverse ecosystems and species assemblages, and/or important congregations of species.
• Connectivity – We prioritize opportunities to complement areas already protected by the Nature Trust, the province, or other conservation partners. This helps increase the amount of contiguous habitat, preserve intact ecosystems, extend wildlife corridors, and make stewardship efforts more efficient.
• Climate Change Resiliency – We prioritize areas and ecosystems that are relatively resilient to climate change (for example, not likely to be lost in the immediate future to sea-level rise), or that facilitate resiliency of ecosystems and species.
• Nature-based Solutions – We look for opportunities where land conservation can help mitigate socio-environmental challenges, such as climate change, pollution, water security, and human health and well-being.
• Representivity – We consider the degree to which natural landscapes and ecosystem types are represented in the current and pending provincial protected areas system, and we prioritize those that are currently underrepresented.

Together these foundational elements drive our six Conservation Priorities. These six Conservation Priorities bring together the scientific imperatives in meaningful groupings that help bring our mission and impact to life. Many of our lands hold more than one of the priorities above.

Learn more about how we identify and prioritize land for our conservation work.

As we move forward in our efforts to conserve Nova Scotia’s natural landscapes, we are harnessing state of the art scientific tools to complement our existing processes for identifying priority lands. One of these tools is known as systematic conservation planning, which is a computer-based modelling framework used to support conservation decision making. In combination with a set of conservation targets (e.g., to protect a certain number of hectares of old growth forest), the model takes information about ecological and anthropogenic features and determines the optimal spatial configuration of conservation lands based on constraints such as financial or total area budgets. Combined with on-the-ground verification, consultations with local and provincial experts and communities, the outputs of the models help us figure out the best pieces of land to protect, and create a strong, connected network biodiversity. These tools help guide our land securement efforts to ensure that every decision we make is backed up by robust science, and supports the long-term protection of biodiversity and ecosystem health.