Zoe Ducklow, Victoria News, Aug 11, 2020

Two parcels of land totalling 76 hectares near the renowned North Coast Trail in Cape Scott Provincial Park have been purchased by BC Parks. The deal included 129 hectares of land on Haida Gwaii, for just under $1 million.

NIHO Land and Cattle Company Ltd. founder Rudy Nielsen confirmed he sold the Cape Scott properties to BC Parks. The land has never been developed, and according to NIHO records, is full of old growth timber.

BC Parks said it would provide information in the coming months on whether the land will be developed as recreational addition to the north Island provincial park.

Cape Scott Provincial Park was founded in 1973 — one year after Nielsen bought his first investment property in the province — with over 22,000 hectares of rugged coastal forests and oceanfront. The North Coast Trail, nearly 60 kilometres long, takes hikers “through old and second growth Sitka spruce, hemlock and cedar forests, upland bogs, riparian areas, across sand, gravel and cobble beaches, and past sea stacks, rocky headlands, and tidal pools,” BC Parks writes in the park description.

One of newly acquired parcels of land is south of Guise Bay on the west coast, with a section of ocean front and kilometers of wild forest. The second is a landlocked lot on the inside of Hansen Lagoon, called Fisherman River. Both parcels of land were already surrounded by park lands on all sides.