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.
Most of the trees being removed are young western hemlocks less than eight inches in diameter, he said, and many other varieties of trees are being planted in their place.
“Where there’s dead trees, typically they will fall over time and then that results in a higher likelihood of a spark or something of that nature causing an ignition and a wildfire spreading,” McLeod told CBC’s On The Coast on Monday.
“So in this case, we’re targeting those smaller trees for wildfire mitigation risk purposes and then also targeting the larger trees for public safety risks.”
A western hemlock looper moth outbreak has killed as many as 30 per cent of Stanley Park’s 600,000 to 700,000 trees, according to the Vancouver Park Board’s manager of urban forestry.
Michael Caditz, director with the non-profit Stanley Park Preservation Society (SPPS), is critical of the plan, saying the vast swaths of cut blocks now visible in the park are an “extreme” response to a fire risk that is overstated.
A petition against the plan organized by the SPPS has garnered more than 15,000 signatures since Feb. 8.
“The trees had formed a sound barrier and a visual barrier, so the entire experience of being in Stanley Park is being disrupted,” Caditz said in an interview Tuesday.
He said he has spoken to experts who say cutting down trees could actually increase fire risk.
“It’s a crisis situation. It’s completely an unforced error that’s happening now by the City of Vancouver and needs to be stopped.”
Felling dead trees leaves room for winds to gather speed and drive fire growth to gather, he said. It can also increase temperatures in the forest by reducing the tree canopy.
Trees that remain standing can also slow fire growth, he said, adding that the debris left behind by logging can also add fuel to fires.
“Another reason is that standing snags [trees] actually slow the progression of fires if they do develop because the fires get caught up in the snag and start burning vertically rather than quickly spreading horizontally along a stripped or a logged-out forest floor,” said Caditz.
B.C. wildfire officials have warned of the possibility of an early and “very challenging” fire season this year due to prolonged drought conditions, and McLeod says the city takes its responsibility for the health of the park and its visitors seriously.
“When you see those wide swaths of space where trees used to stand, it’s definitely jarring,” he said, “and I totally respect and feel that same way. I guess what I want to get across is that forests are dynamic environments.
“I think within the next few years, the park is going to look vibrant and green and be regenerating.”
Caditz says the move to cut down the trees, which was an operational decision made without public consultation or a park board vote, lacks transparency and threatens the “intrinsic value of nature in Stanley Park.”
“Now that the weather’s warming up and Vancouverites are going to come out to Stanley Park this spring, I think they’re going to be shocked when they see what’s happened in certain parts of the park,” he said.