The owner of the small Blue Beach Fossil Museum, along with partner Chris Mansky, appears ready to throw in the towel on plans to build a $10-million world-class museum to preserve fossils dating back 350 million years.
Wood has been tirelessly promoting the scientific value of the site, and the idea of a museum, for the past 20 years. Mansky has been collecting fossils for that same period, drawing attention from scientists and researchers from around the world.
Blue Beach has long been recognized as a mecca for fossil collectors and scientists. There have been fossils collected here of early terrestrial tetrapods, primitive amphibians and the first creatures known to have walked the Earth.
Many are stored at the tiny private museum. This week, scientists from the University of Calgary and Cambridge University in England are conducting research here. It’s also a popular site for school trips, tourists and fossil collectors everywhere.
But all that could change, as plans for the museum go by the wayside. After years of battling government red tape and countless obstacles, Wood has listed her property for sale.
If it goes to a private buyer, the museum concept could be lost for good, she said in an interview at the site Tuesday.
“I’m at the end of the line, and my pocketbook is at the end of the line.”
The area along the Minas Basin falls into what scientists refer to as Romer’s Gap, a 25-million-year period where, prior to discoveries at Blue Beach, paleontologists believed there were no land animals on the planet.
Until recently, scientists had no evidence of tetrapods, the animals that first climbed out of the sea to move about on land.
Cambridge scientist Jennifer Clack said Tuesday that the fossils and trackways being found here offer unique material about a period in history that had little previous scientific evidence. Now they are recognized by scientists as part of the “missing link” in evolution.
Just a few years ago, there were plans for a 10,000-square-foot modern museum on the site. A business plan showed a museum could bring $1.8 million in economic spinoffs from within a half-hour driving radius.
A non-profit society was formed to raise money, purchase a two-hectare parcel of land and start construction. Wood was hopeful that her small home-based museum would grow into a world-class institute.
She said she was encouraged by governments of the day to pursue the project.
The Municipality of the County of Kings agreed to provide $100,000 over three years. The Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency put $5,000 into the project. The province contributed $15,000.
Wood received the first instalment from the county. Then she was forced to jump through endless hoops, having to get bylaws changed, forge a development agreement, develop the business plan and conduct a shoreline erosion report, she said.
In 2012, things began to unravel. The regional development authority working on the project no longer exists, the county wasn’t satisfied with the business plan and held back its next two instalments of $33,500 each, and experts questioned the shoreline erosion report.
The project has received no government funding or support since.
“Between running the museum, doing research and getting this project off the ground, I’m broke,” Wood said.
“Our decision (to sell) has been made because we have burned ourselves out trying to do our best.”
She wrote to Premier Stephen McNeil recently. She received a reply from Heritage and Culture Minister Tony Ince.
“We are aware that Blue Beach … is a significant fossil site that tells an important chapter in our paleontological history,” Ince wrote in the April 30 letter. He added that all fossils from the site are protected by the Special Places Protection Act.
“We are committed to the protection of these fossils for future generations of Nova Scotians, and if it is of assistance to you in your efforts to sell your property, we are prepared to receive your collection for preservation within the Nova Scotia Museum, as required by the act,” he added.
Wood said governments are obviously no longer interested in the museum project.
An online petition is asking the provincial and federal governments to build a world-class museum to preserve the fossil site, create jobs and promote the area as a tourist destination.
The petition had 1,083 signatures as of Tuesday.