Make Mt Doug "Mt Deer"?

Local native people are telling Saanich to re-name Mt Douglas and the park, in an effort to tweak people's understanding of local history. History is what it is, and veiling parts of the past that someone doesn't like on the basis of political correctness in the present is an unworthy project, but that aside, if Saanich decides to adopt official amnesia about James Douglas they could change the name of our beloved little mountain to Mt. Deer -- and then make it a deer park.

It could be part of the network of wildlife corridors some residents have been asking for, and we could be making history, of the ecological kind, by dealing innovatively with the loss of green space, biodiversity and wildlife sanctuary that every city is faced with under conditions of increasing development.

Saanich has heard a lot of complaints about deer on farms and roads, but no one has instigated a cull yet -- at least not an official one -- because the public is passionately divided. The pro-deer, compassionate, life-affirming side is also strong. So politicians need to find a place where deer can go without causing problems (and no matter how cruelly ruthless a cull is, some deer will survive and reproduce). Deer parks would be an answer, together with a "spay-vac" program of population control. Deer parks would be havens for other wildlife as well (plus nature-loving people and nature-deficient kids), and of course -- no hunting would be allowed. We don't want to revive too much history ...

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Any Trees For Tomorrow?

After the provincial election of 2009, the Throne Speech announced a program of funding "Trees For Tomorrow" - four million of them to be distributed across BC over the next five years. At the Tree Appreciation Day in the fall of 2009, Victoria residents planted a few of them in Stadacona Park. That was the end of it however. The "economic downturn happened" says a Ministry of  Jobs, Tourism and Skills Training employee (the Ministry that, unpromisingly, inherited the program after it got moved in a shuffle from its first home, the Ministry of Community Development, Sports and Culture), and the tree plan was axed. There were more important demands on the public purse, explained my informant, and everybody forgot about Trees For Tomorrow. So much for Throne Speech promises.

Meanwhile after years of studies, consultants, public meetings, open houses, displays, polls, walls covered in diagrams, tables covered in free coffee, memos and desultory evasive media interviews, Victoria's Urban Forest Master Plan was issued in February (see the website - www.victoria.ca) -- still talking about trees for tomorrow, but not saying how many they are planting today.

How many trees will be planted in a park or a boulevard today? How many will be taken out by developers? How many will be designated "dangerous"? What's the grand total, how does the ledger read? Incredibly, after years of Master Planning, we apparently still don't have a full inventory.

According to the Vancouver Sun, our capital city has lost hundreds of trees since 2005, while Vancouver has planted hundreds.

The Forest Master Plan is called a "road map," city staff are "examining it" and it is to be followed by the "Urban Forest Action Plan" -- but that does not mean it will be followed by action. There have been a lot of expensive time-consuming plans that the public participated in in good faith, demonstrating overwhelmingly in polls and messages to Council that they want to expand the urban forest. Council has not listened, because their Master Plan says this:

"Increasing infill and densification—desirable for many reasons—limits the availability of greenspace for growing new large trees."

 

In other words, Council has taken the pro-development line, but that is not new. The choice is: preserve park and garden space, or pave it. Go green or go grey. Councils of Victoria and also Oak Bay have repeatedly demonstrated their preference for the latter, but they waste a lot of time and resources on pretending they are listening to and "engaging" with people holding the pro-tree point of view. Victoria's Forest Master Plan even includes as a recommendation:

"Increase community support for the urban forest."

Yet "the community" has already amply shown their support for urban forest during the endless long-winded consultation process. The policy makers have not listened. This is an insult to the public, but more importantly in this era of municipal debt, rising infrastructure costs and rising taxes, this was a waste of money. The municipal governments have in fact abdicated their responsibility as governors, and handed the decision making to the development industry. The fate of the urban forest, canopy, undergrowth and wildlife habitat, is, they declare:

"dependent on the land-use and vegetation management choices of the city’s many homeowners, land managers and developers. The City can help to influence these choices through community engagement, strategic land-use and development planning, and its regulatory framework."

We have seen what "community engagement" amounts to, and if land-use and vegetation choices are to be made by "land managers and developers," why do we need government? To develop a "regulatory framework" at public expense to smooth the wheels for paving and building.? What does the public get? Meaningless documents full of buzzwords and bureaucra-speak. Rather like a Throne Speech.

Victoria - leave the Legislature grass alone!

Are they kidding? The City wants to burden home-owner taxpayers even more by messing with the inner harbour? They call it "place making" but here's some news: it's already a place. It's been a place for decades for cultural events, rallies, art-viewing, music-listening (ever heard of the Symphony Splash? let alone the buskers). They say we'll be able to walk along the harbour front. More news: we've been walking north Victoria to James Bay for decades! For this, the City has dreamed up another reason to extend concrete and remove green landscape, i.e. take away a portion of grass from the legislative grounds. Does that mean it will look like this (a new "plaza" on Humboldt Street):

Cold, sterile, hard, uninviting -- we so much do not need more of this. Pavement-creep is taking away all our soft, inviting, yielding, comfortable lawn in Victoria. How can you sit on concrete to have a picnic, to take a rest, enjoy the sun as you're sight-seeing? Concrete all year round is cold and ugly, but in summer it also creates a heat island, while grass exudes oxygen and absorbs carbon dioxide -- and the municipality says it cares about global warming?

Victoria, like any other downtown, will be "vibrant" if people have a reason to go there (and if they can find a place to park). You cannot manufacture fake cultural events to make people gravitate to a place. Study after study has shown that people gravitate to green space, not paved plazas. So while they're at it, why doesn't the City dig up the cold hard unloved concrete surface of Centennial Square and put down grass, shrubbery, floral display - the big cedar in its centre is downtown's favourite object and meeting space -- shouldn't they be learning something by observing that? They could make the whole of Centennial soft and inviting, an oasis of green in the tattiest part of downtown. The inner harbour-legislature-Empress Hotel corner is already the most attractive part of south downtown - so why mess with that?

It looks like our historic grassy legislature lawn already gets quite a lot of use for the things people do care about:

                                                           Anti-Enbridge rally 2012

Plants, Animals, Parks and Buddhism

Sadly, because growth, paving and development are eating up natural landscape in urban/suburban areas, wildlife is being pitted against plant life in the shrinking green areas that are left. Actually, it is not a contest between animals and plants we see developing, but rather one between animal-lovers and plant-lovers. Animals and plants themselves have always co-existed and co-evolved in dynamic relationships that maintain overall ecological balance. Animals prune trees and plants, their hooves and claws churn soil, they control undergrowth, fertilize the soil, distribute seeds ... their relationships with trees and plants are complex and fascinating.

Even introduced plants and animals are quickly brought into harmony by Mother Nature; an example was mentioned by a local nature-watcher recently who tells Treewatch that the ivy growing thickly on her fences is shelter not only for raccoons (who eat various insect pests) but also for hummingbirds who hide in the ivy at night and find food in entwining blooms and buds and partner plants. We can learn a lot in our gardens by leaving them alone and watching what happens with the plant, bird and animal life: this is the backyard university.

As green space in the CRD shrinks into ever-smaller pockets, these are claimed by both native plant lovers and by deer lovers (not to mention dog-walkers and the kids-should-play-outside-in-nature devotees) -- each wanting the others to go somewhere else. But we are running out of elsewhere. We need to solve the problem on two fronts: expand and protect more green space, and allow for nature herself to sort out the balance of plant and animal. In other words, stop micro-managing every park and garden.

The micro-managing most likely comes from the growing anxiety about shortages and scarcity of greenspace. It mirrors what happens when any form of scarcity threatens - people get protective, competitive and less generous, expansive and tolerant in their attitudes. There must be a good subject for a PhD in social psychology in here somewhere ...  but meanwhile let's work to expand urban greenspace, scale back the scarcity threat, and work more inclusively together. Maybe take the Buddhist view? Do no harm, kill nothing, and be compassionate toward all creatures.

BJ.

Floral Spring

Blooms are bursting out all over: Oak Bay Avenue (Victoria end), and arbutuses and rhodos on Wilmot Street behind St. Mary's Church. Someone is thinking about the birds in Hillside-Oaklands area.

 

 

Great link to urban nature appreciation

As we basked in the warmth of our Easter weekend weather surrounded by blazing new colour, (thank you forsythia, magnolia, cherry trees ...) it's hard to remember that the rest of the continent is still suffering through winter. Here's a link to a great urban-nature site from Boston, tons of terrific bird and tree shots -- in the snow(!)  Note the Canada geese on the Olmsted Lake - I wonder whether they've flown out this way and seen our Olmsted "park" (the Uplands) ?

For "Skinny in a Land of Plenty" go to   http://sicloot.com/blog/

What kind of "birdies" do we need most? Saanich please preserve the Sutcliffe Road thicket

Pavement-creep happens for all kinds of reasons. Developers build buildings, roads and interchanges are widened for airport enlargement and monster buses, and the CRD's proposed Cycling Master Plan is asking for 200 km more bike lane paving. At the end of Sutcliffe Road in Saanich (Cordova Bay), a group wants to destroy a little wooded thicket so as to build a badminton facility.

There aren't many thickets left in residential areas of Saanich, whereas there are already many sports facilities. The value of having un-manicured green spaces near residences, is that they are a natural setting kids can play in and get to near home (fending off "nature deficity disorder), and they are where big air-cleansing, shade-bestowing trees can still flourish and birds find habitat. A Treewatch reader reports that there is also a family of deer in the Sutcliffe thicket, beloved of residents nearby.

Saanich and the Peninsula municipalities are busily thinking up ways of getting rid of deer -- not excepting the violence of shooting them, while some recommend just scaring them away or fencing them out. The question is, where will they go then? Some areas need to be set aside for wildlife, if a municipality is to maintain ecological health and support human mental and physical health and enjoyment. The wooded respite at the end of Sutcliffe Road is an example of a space that should not be "developed" -- a word which actually means "degraded," i.e. from a spot of life-giving naturalism to yet another paved dead zone.

Saanich along with all the municipalities in the CRD should be working out a network of green corridors for wildlife movement and habitat, and preserving spots of green relief in the built landscape.

BJ.