Criticism mounts over plans to clear one-third of Stanley Park’s trees

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City of Vancouver plans to cut down nearly one-third of the trees in Stanley Park in response to wildfire concerns and a looper moth infestation are facing intense pushback from local residents and experts.

“There’s just no basis in logic or science for the premise upon which this entire operation is founded, which is that there’s some kind of imminent fire danger,” said Michael Caditz of the non-profit Stanley Park Preservation Society, which has created a petition opposing the plan that has collected over 15,000 signatures since Feb. 8.

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“The parks board made a decision to embark on a program to cut down, by their estimate, about 160,000 trees in Stanley Park,” Caditz said. “Their justification for that was that there was an emergency which was an imminent fire danger and they had no choice but to proceed without any delays. Without any public consultation. Without any hearings.”

”All these young trees that they plant are going to be the same age. And they’re gonna take decades for those trees to mature,” he said.

Brennan Bastyovanszky, the park board chair, acknowledged the need for more transparency around the decision but felt the decision the board reached was the right one.

“As chair, I encouraged (the city) to share, to provide more transparency,” he said.

“We felt that the decisions were the right ones and we wanted the people here to understand that we want to replant, that we want to make it a more robust forest, and that there is a serious risk of forest fire with all those dead trees,” Bastyovanszky said.

“We’re expecting a very hot, dry summer and there’s regular concerns about fires in Stanley Park,” he said.

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Arborist Norm Oberson said that, unlike interior hemlocks which are highly combustible, the coastal hemlocks found in Stanley Park are a relatively low fire risk.

“The fungus in the forest just decomposes it to eliminate the risk,” he said.

Oberson is opposed to the parks board’s efforts to remove so many trees from the park.

“You do not want the parks board replacing the trees in Stanley Park. The forest will do that itself,” he said.

Oberson said removing hemlocks puts the overall health of the park at risk, calling the decaying trees “the nutrients” of the forest.

He said that dead and decaying hemlocks — and the looper moths themselves — provide essential food and shelter for birds and other animals in the park.

Most looper damage to hemlock trees takes place from July to October. Brown-coloured looper moths start appearing in early September to October.

Looper larvae feed voraciously on the needles of hemlock. They also target other conifers such as Douglas fir and western red cedar. Defoliation of new and old growth by looper larvae can kill a hemlock tree in a year.

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Nearly one-quarter of all trees in Stanley Park have been affected by the outbreak, which has also affected parts of North and West Vancouver.

Stanley Park has roughly half a million trees.

Bastyovanszky said the city has the “full intention” of replanting but will do so with Douglas fir and red cedar. He said fir and cedar trees are more resilient to fire and less susceptible to the cyclical looper moth outbreaks, which happens every 15 years or so.

He said the tree removal is essential to restarting the forest afresh and giving it the strongest chance of withstanding future threats to its health.

“Most of the trees that are being removed are small,” Bastyovanszky said. “They’re all dead or dying.”

“By planting the red cedars and the Douglas firs, for the next 100 years Stanley Park will be healthy and just more resilient,” he said.

According to the city, timber will be sent to Squamish for processing and wood with potential for cultural use by First Nations will be offered to the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. Any remaining commercially viable wood will be sold to local processing facilities but were expected to cover less than five per cent of costs associated with mitigation and restoration of the forest.

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@njgriffiths
ngriffiths@postmedia.com

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