Work to cut down approximately one-quarter of the trees in Vancouver’s Stanley Park is facing growing opposition from advocates who say the city’s plan is doing more harm than good.
The Vancouver Park Board began cutting down an estimated 160,000 trees killed by an ongoing western hemlock looper moth infestation last summer, and says the plan will help limit “imminent” fire and public safety risks in the four-square-kilometre park.
Drought and the moth infestation have weakened the trees’ root systems and left them dry, making them more easy to set alight or tip over onto paths and power lines, according to Joe McLeod, the park board’s director of urban forestry.
So the dead and non-kiving trees will be cut so they don’t fall down or kindle a fire.
And a group wanting to save the Dead trees wants that prevented.
I say put up a few mil as a bond against damage and fire response and we have a deal. If they’re going to contravene what the experts say, they need to address the risk we’re incurring for their love of dead trees.
Plus it will be a lot faster for new trees to grow once the old ones are gone. There’s no benefit to keeping a giant stand of dead trees.
Keep a few as wildlife trees but most of them should go.
The individual mentioned in the article seems to have little to no credible sources to back up any of his claims. Reminds me of the people on Reddit that somehow manage to write a 10 paragraph essay about a post but didn’t even read the article.
That said I’d like to see the original assessment confirmed by some other sources before they proceed.
On Nov. 29, the park board announced in a news release that 160,000 trees would be chopped because of the Hemlock looper moth infestation and fears of a wildfire. In September, it secretly hired forestry consultancy B.A. Blackwell and Associates Ltd. of North Vancouver on an emergency, no-bid contract to manage the operation, estimated at almost $7 million.
Norm Oberson, owner of Arbutus Tree Service and a member of the Trees of Vancouver Society board, said it is standard to take inventory of trees needing removal or pruning.
”You don’t cut a tree down in a park unless it’s been assessed by a risk assessor, a provincially certified risk assessor or an [International Society of Arboriculture] qualified tree risk assessor,” Oberson said. “It sounds like they really haven’t followed the due process.”
