Up to one-quarter of trees in Stanley Park could be removed

Work to chop down roughly one-quarter of the bushes in Vancouver’s Stanley Park is dealing with rising opposition from advocates who say the town’s plan is doing extra hurt than good.

The Vancouver Park Board started chopping down an estimated 160,000 bushes killed by an ongoing western hemlock looper moth infestation final summer time, and says the plan will assist restrict “imminent” hearth and public security dangers within the four-square-kilometre park.

Drought and the moth infestation have weakened the bushes’ root methods and left them dry, making them easier to set alight or tip over onto paths and energy strains, in keeping with Joe McLeod, the park board’s director of city forestry.

Many of the bushes being eliminated are younger western hemlocks lower than eight inches in diameter, he mentioned, and lots of different forms of bushes are being planted of their place.

“The place there’s lifeless bushes, usually they may fall over time after which that ends in the next probability of a spark or one thing of that nature inflicting an ignition and a wildfire spreading,” McLeod informed CBC’s On The Coast on Monday. 

“So on this case, we’re focusing on these smaller bushes for wildfire mitigation danger functions after which additionally focusing on the bigger bushes for public security dangers.”

WATCH | Stanley Park bushes hit arduous by drought, moth infestation:

Greater than 1 / 4 of Stanley Park’s bushes killed by lethal moth virus: park board

A western hemlock looper moth outbreak has killed as many as 30 per cent of Stanley Park’s 600,000 to 700,000 bushes, in keeping with the Vancouver Park Board’s supervisor of city forestry.

Michael Caditz, director with the non-profit Stanley Park Preservation Society (SPPS), is crucial of the plan, saying the huge swaths of minimize blocks now seen within the park are an “excessive” response to a fireplace danger that’s overstated.

A petition in opposition to the plan organized by the SPPS has garnered greater than 15,000 signatures since Feb. 8.

“The bushes had fashioned a sound barrier and a visible barrier, so your entire expertise of being in Stanley Park is being disrupted,” Caditz mentioned in an interview Tuesday. 

He mentioned he has spoken to specialists who say chopping down bushes might truly enhance hearth danger.

“It is a disaster scenario. It is utterly an unforced error that is taking place now by the Metropolis of Vancouver and must be stopped.”

Felling lifeless bushes leaves room for winds to assemble pace and drive hearth progress to assemble, he mentioned. It might probably additionally enhance temperatures within the forest by lowering the tree cover.

Timber that stay standing can even sluggish hearth progress, he mentioned, including that the particles left behind by logging can even add gas to fires.

“One more reason is that standing snags [trees] truly sluggish the development of fires in the event that they do develop as a result of the fires get caught up within the snag and begin burning vertically reasonably than shortly spreading horizontally alongside a stripped or a logged-out forest flooring,” mentioned Caditz.

B.C. wildfire officers have warned of the potential for an early and “very difficult” hearth season this 12 months attributable to extended drought situations, and McLeod says the town takes its accountability for the well being of the park and its guests critically.

“Once you see these broad swaths of area the place bushes used to face, it is undoubtedly jarring,” he mentioned, “and I completely respect and really feel that very same method. I suppose what I need to get throughout is that forests are dynamic environments.

“I feel throughout the subsequent few years, the park goes to look vibrant and inexperienced and be regenerating.”

Caditz says the transfer to chop down the bushes, which was an operational resolution made with out public session or a park board vote, lacks transparency and threatens the “intrinsic worth of nature in Stanley Park.”

“Now that the climate’s warming up and Vancouverites are going to come back out to Stanley Park this spring, I feel they are going to be shocked after they see what’s occurred in sure elements of the park,” he mentioned.