A4

Chris Morris
Telegraph-Journal

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The Bay of Fundy has made it to the next stage of judging in a prestigious international contest to pick the top seven wonders of nature.

But the competition is getting extremely tough as the bay faces off against such hot spots as the Grand Canyon, the Great Barrier Reef and the Dead Sea.

Nevertheless, Terri McCulloch, the tireless promoter who has spearheaded the bay's rise to prominence in the New Seven Wonders of Nature contest, is optimistic.

"We're close to the top of the pile," she said in an interview Thursday from her office in Parrsboro, N.S. "Even places like the Rockies and Niagara Falls are not in the contest anymore. We're very honoured to be representing Canada."

McCulloch said 450 international sites were originally entered in the contest. That number was winnowed down to 240, and now it's down to the top 77.

The 28 official finalist candidates will be announced at the New7Wonders Foundation headquarters in Zurich, Switzerland on July 21.

McCulloch said the next round of finalists will be decided by an independent committee, which gives each site points in a number of categories.

She said the bay should have an edge in the scoring.

"We don't just have geology, coastal rock formations, ecology, endangered species habitat - we have them all," she said.

"As well, we will receive recognition for the fact that we already two UNESCO sites on the Bay of Fundy."

UNESCO recently recognized the upper Bay of Fundy as a Biosphere Reserve and Joggins Fossil Cliffs as a World Heritage Site.

It didn't look good earlier for the Bay of Fundy when it was nosed out by Alberta's Dinosaur Provincial Park in the country-wide contest last January.

But the park was recently eliminated because of its lack of participation in the international round of competition and the bay was back in the running.

The Bay of Fundy is best known for the highest tides in the world and has been compared, in marine biodiversity, to the Amazon Rainforest.

The bay is the summer feeding area for half of the world's population of endangered North Atlantic Right whales and 12 other whale species.

It is home to the world's most complete fossil record of the "Coal Age" (300 million years ago) as well as the world's oldest reptiles and Canada's oldest dinosaurs.