Implementing Watershed Stewardship in Priority Nova Scotia Watersheds

The Nova Scotia Salmon Association (NSSA) has pioneered a multi-faceted, science-based approach to watershed assessment and habitat restoration in Nova Scotia through the development of Watershed Stewardship Plans (WSPs). These plans integrate experienced restoration perspectives, climate resilience, habitat assessments, and landscape-level processes to identify the most impactful restoration opportunities for wild Atlantic salmon populations. Using an inter-disciplinary framework, WSPs evaluate five critical components of freshwater salmon habitat—stream slope, water chemistry and pH, landscape cover and riparian condition, water temperature dynamics, and channel sinuosity. For every watershed, these variables are synthesized into weighted scores for each sub-catchment known as Spatial Planning Units (SPUs), allowing NSSA to identify where restoration actions will yield the greatest biological return on investment.

Support from FCAS will significantly strengthen and scale the technical capacity of NSSA’s Adopt-a-Stream (AAS) program – Nova Scotia’s primary mechanism for community-based aquatic habitat restoration. Through the enhancement of science-based monitoring, increased field work, and improved planning capacity, NSSA will be positioned to lead a more coordinated, data-driven provincial effort that accelerates the implementation of high-priority restoration projects.

This project will focus on three main components: (1) the implementation of six of the existing WSPs across the province as well as partnering with other Atlantic salmon conservation groups, (2) developing 2 additional WSPs per year to better inform restoration efforts in the Atlantic salmon watersheds of Nova Scotia and (3) providing technical support to 20 watershed organizations throughout the province annually to complete priority restoration projects.

This project proposes to implement recently developed WSPs in the Gulf Region, Southern Uplands and Eastern Cape Breton regions of Nova Scotia’s Atlantic salmon populations. These plans represent shovel-ready, high-impact projects that can be implemented with the support of NSSA technical guidance and expertise.

These restoration projects will address degraded instream habitat where channel slope has been identified as being within the optimal range (1 – 3%) and areas with identified cold-water refugia will be prioritized. The goal of these projects will be to improve habitat conditions such as spawning, juvenile rearing and pools to improve productivity across all freshwater life-stages of Atlantic salmon. Furthermore, these projects will leverage the local partnerships established over the past two decades of stewardship and conservation by the NSSA.

The watersheds where activities are proposed were initially selected based on feedback from local stewardship organizations and the Confederacy of Mainland Mi’kmaq and the Unama’ki Institute of Natural Resources, our collaborating partners in aquatic ecosystem restoration. The implementation of these projects represents a critical continuation of the momentum created through the extensive planning and monitoring work conducted by NSSA and our project partners.

This project represents the logical and necessary continuation of years of monitoring, analysis, and collaborative planning. With FCAS support, NSSA will have the technical capacity required to implement and expand this work at the scale needed to support the recovery of Nova Scotia’s wild Atlantic salmon populations.