'Devastating': Park board commissioners tour urban logging operation in Stanley Park
On Thursday, Vancouver Park Board commissioners saw firsthand the massive logging operation now underway in Stanley Park, as crews continue to cut down tens of thousands of hemlock trees killed by a years-long looper moth infestation.
“It’s been devastating what we saw today,” said Commissioner Tom Digby. “The urban forestry team took us through the major logging that’s been going on here for the last four months. And just to see the amount of trees that have come down is absolutely devastating.”
It's estimated 160,000 trees, or 30 per cent of the park, will have to be cut down in the next five years. The park board decided leaving the dead hemlocks standing would be risky, as they could fall on people as they decay.
“In five to 10 years you would have a lot of trees debris, branches and trees falling, and then the park would have to close a lot of trails because they would become too dangerous,” said
Richard Hamelin, the department head for UBC Forest Conservation Sciences. “There are so many people people in the park all year round really, they decided to go the safety route which is to remove the trees, so that they don’t become a danger.”
The dead trees are also being taken down to reduce forest fire risk.
“Wildfire is completely unpredictable, I mean ask the people up in Kelowna,” said Digby. “We just overall reduce the fire load, the fuel load, and that makes us all safer.”
The highly visible tree removal in a park considered to be Vancouver’s crown jewel has its detractors. An online petition asking the park board to halt the logging has gathered over 16,500 signatures. Hamelin thinks the city is partly to blame for not explaining that the trees are dead and have to be cut down.
“They kind of left it to social media to judge what’s happening and whether it’s good or bad. I think they should have put up signs explaining this is an outbreak of a natural insect killing a lot of the trees in Stanley Park, and we need to take these actions. Because then a lot of people would understand. They kind of left it open, and now they’re paying for it,” said Hamelin.
There is a plan to replace the dead hemlock. Starting next week, 25,000 new seedlings will be planted in the park.
“The hemlock were doomed species in this space, the hemlock looper always gets them. But now we have chance to bring in Douglas fir and cedar and red alder to help provide nutrients for the soil, so this is actually a big transition for this park,” said Digby.
“I think we are going to be looking at maybe four to five years and the park will be green again,” said Hamelin. “Forests are resilient. It’s going to come back, and it’s going to come back stronger and better. That’s what nature does.”
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
Parents of infant who died in wrong-way crash on Ontario's Hwy. 401 were in same vehicle
Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit has released new details about a wrong-way collision in Whitby on Monday night that claimed the lives of four people.
Three Quebec men from same family father hundreds of children
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
B.C. mayor stripped of budget, barred from committees over Indigenous residential schools book
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
OPP's mandatory alcohol screening during traffic stops 'not acceptable': CCLA
A spike in impaired driving-related collisions has caused Ontario’s provincial police to begin enforcing mandatory alcohol screening (MAS) at all traffic stops in the Greater Toronto Area -- a move one civil rights group says is ‘not acceptable.’
Maple Leafs down Bruins 2-1 to force Game 7
William Nylander scored twice and Joseph Woll made 22 saves as the Toronto Maple Leafs downed the Boston Bruins 2-1 on Thursday to force Game 7 in their first-round series.
Jurors in Trump hush money trial hear recording of pivotal call on plan to buy affair story
Jurors in the hush money trial of Donald Trump heard a recording Thursday of him discussing with his then-lawyer and personal fixer a plan to purchase the silence of a Playboy model who has said she had an affair with the former president.
Southern Alberta store broken into by burly black bear
Staff at a small southern Alberta office supply store were shocked to find someone had broken into the business last week, but they were even more confused when they discovered the culprit was a bear.
Captain sentenced to 4 years for criminal negligence in fiery deaths of 34 aboard scuba boat
A federal judge on Thursday sentenced a scuba dive boat captain to four years in custody and three years supervised release for criminal negligence after 34 people died in a fire aboard the vessel.
New scam targets Canada Carbon Rebate recipients
Fake text message and email campaigns trying to get money and information out of unsuspecting Canadian taxpayers have started circulating, just months after the federal government rebranded the carbon tax rebate the Canada Carbon Rebate.