Purple sandpipers are a unique and hardy bird that breed in the tundra and winter along our coastlines.
Our tidal wetlands are important for biodiversity, mitigating climate change, and supporting bird populations.
Conserving NL's Special Places
Newfoundland and Labrador is home to many important and sensitive wildlife habitats. The iconic puffin, the fish that swim our rivers, and the shorebirds that visit our coastlines each fall are just some of the things that make our biodiversity special. As a central part of SAM's mission we work to identify, prioritize and conserve the land areas of the province that support important biodiversity and are important to us culturally. We seek, in partnership with our municipal members, to find a balance between preservation of biodiversity values and economic and social development opportunities. We also recognize that there are many ways that these lands can be effectively conserved and so we actively seek to share our findings with other people and groups who share our vision.
Coastal Estuaries and Beaches
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Our province's extensive coastline contains wonderful bays, estuaries, and beaches that are often habitats that typically support higher concentrations of wildlife. in 2018, supported by funding from Wildlife Habitat Canada, we started building a mapped inventory by drawing together various current and historical sources of data such as the Sensitive Beaches in NL report from the former Protected Areas Association of NL, the CPAWS NL Special Marine Areas Guide, DFO’s eelgrass mapping research, Ducks Unlimited Canada research and reports, the Atlantic Canada Shorebird Survey, Atlantic Canada’s Natural Heritage Areas, Tingley’s 1992 Inventory of Selected Waterfowl Sites in Newfoundland, public data sources such as eBird, and many more government, NGO, and other data and documents.