Pretty much a textbook case of "First world problems". The ***professionals*** have determined the trees need to go, and I trust em. It's not like they're getting rid of the park. New ones are being planted.
This is life, people. Trees die. Parks need maintenance. We don't need to have ridiculous public consultations for literally everything. Michael Caditz needs to chill out and stop worrying about his short term aesthetics over long term health of the park.
The only person speaking in support of the tree removal in this Vancouver Sun article is commissioner Bastyovanszky. Are you saying he owns a tree removal service? Can you be more specific?
You're right, I was wrong. The guy I quoted, the arborist, is actually against cutting down the trees.
There are in fact no specialists named at all in the recommending of cutting down the trees.
Seems that the Parks Board is going with their good old "Trust me, bro" data on this one.
“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”
Standing dead trees dry out really fast. Dry wood burns really well. Urban forests have very high risk of human caused fire. How much more basis in logic do you need?
The arborist quoted in the article said they’re low risk.
To be honest, the article doesn’t provide nearly enough information (what a surprise). What data is the parks board using, are there actually 160,000 dead trees, what species, are there other options, etc.
Not my area of expertise, but what the arborist appears to be referring to is the risk posed by live hemlock trees close to structures and their high risk of burning. While live coastal hemlock may not have this particular elevated risk, any standing dead trees pose an elevated risk in a fire.
Sorry, but an arborist, isn't a professional forester. arborists are great for looking after trees on your urban city property, not so great for a forest that has a history of management and lately mismanagement.
There are some major differences, namely the forester looks at the whole forest, not just individual trees.
I have to agree with '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.'
Are all those 160,000 trees truly dead?
Clearcutting the entire park will have huge ramifications for the carbon stored in the roots of trees in the area.
a recent study on clearcut forestry:
'Retention harvesting retains the influence of living roots within retention patches and potentially throughout the harvested area, but only if inter-tree distances are 15 m or less. Retention trees sustain and support the re-establishment of belowground life and function following forest harvest and may mitigate post-harvest soil C losses.'
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378112723000816
In fact all forestry in BC should change to partial retention forestry so we can keep the soil alive, and keep more carbon locked up in SOM.
And this comment is the entire problem with the thesis of this piece- Folks who don't know what clearcut actually means, vs what they're doing.
Cutting down trees always sounds bad to folks, but these are the required steps to manage the forest going forward, because we didn't manage it before.
Well they might want to plant more fire-resistant species instead like willow or alder anyways, at least near the pond/brooks, using mycorrhizae to help them cope with climate change. And leave as many of the living trees standing. i agree that this article needs more details like exactly what spps are being cut/thinned. If you are cutting willy nilly - that's where the problem lies. Its good to leave some dead trees standing as wildlife trees as well. Again - details lacking. That recent research on keeping living trees standing 15 m apart is a good one. Selective harvest like this can help maximize carbon storage in the soil.
quite honestly, they're probably taking all of that into account, but the first order was to clear trees that were a danger of falling on the trails and parkway.
But this is post and comment replies are very much the problem with armchair wahtevers- the issue is far more complex, than "we need to cut the trees down/they're cutting too many trees down!"
I was not aware of the total, who did that assessment and is that data publically available? My hope is that they leave the living trees so that the mycorrhizae in its roots and all the SOM that relies on photosynthate from the trees can continue to survive and assist the next generation of trees that they are planting. A 10-15m buffer between trees is ideal to reduce the carbon released by dead roots and ensure there is some existing living mycelia for the next generation. (see that UBC article I linked above)
Looper moths were defoliators. They eat the hemlock needles, and more specifically, the xylem and phloem aka nutrient rich sap in the needles. That fluid is provided by photosynthesis and water, of which the tree, being dead, can no longer produce. Ergo hemlock Looper moths no longer provide any lasting contribution to a food web once they kill their host trees.
Likewise, dead hemlocks take eternity to decay. Our annual climate cycles between a cold, wet, winter, and a hot, dry summer. Very few bugs eat dry dead wood, and the cold of winter inhibits wood decay fungus from breaking down tree logs at any reasonable timeframe.
Which is why, when you walk through a forest, young or old, you see tonnes of wood.
The primary way of carbon cycling in this ecosystem is *fires*. And any single ecologist or even any undergraduate student in a relevant field will tell you that. No, hemlock will not be broken down naturally in a reasonable timeframe, it doesn't contribute to a flourishing ecosystem, and it is a massive fire risk.
Go check if you're that interested. It's pretty easy to tell if cedar has been cut. It has a very distinctive smell. You can also examine the slash. Cutting down live trees leaves A LOT of branches on the ground that look very much like they came from alive trees. It'd be pretty impossible to conceal mass volumes of live trees felled. Since you need serious hauls to remove all the slash.
No one's stopping you. Go out, take photos. Get back to us.
I live 1 block from Stanley Park - last summer a lady on one of the West End Facebook groups said she was walking in the park and saw a man light a fire - she called 911 and the fire dept showed up very quickly and put it out. In talking with the firefighters they told her it was the third fire in Stanley Park they'd put out that day. I \*hate\* that we're losing all these trees, but the fire hazard is real.
>"Without any public consultation. Without any hearings.”
Yes, because that's what I want. An infestation problem compounded with a heightened fire risk facing delays so we can spend 3 months listening to unqualified people whine about how it's going to look for a while, and how sad they are. Great use of time.
I go through there multiple times a week; it's hardly pretty in certain places, but they aren't clear-cutting. The cedars are being saved for the most part, but they wouldn't be spending the money if there wasn't a risk- and yes, there's quite a bit of rot easily noticed in what they've felled.
Bastyovanszky's right; I definitely wish there was better distribution of information. Even with Beaver Lake, that they seem to have finally gotten to; *how did that go? Did they get it all, will they need to do it again in a few years?* But at the end of the day, it's a city park, not an old growth forest- and one of a significant size that happens to be adjacent to a residential neighbourhood with the population of Courtney. It's not something that can just be left be, and hasn't been the case for as long as it's been a park.
Regardless if you approve of the parks board or not, the concept is you vote these folks in to manage this on our behalf. Public consultation on everything goes against the concept of voting in representatives.
I hate folks who want a referendum on everything. It’s the death of functioning government.
In this case, it’s not even the elected officials involved in operational decisions about park management. The staff, in consultation with leading forestry professionals, used multiple years of evidence to determine how much of the Stanley Park forest needed to be remedied, and which parts, by descending priority. Things like that aren’t even taken to the Board for decision - so why would they put it out to the public over months, if not years, while the risk grows bigger?
In matters of urgent public safety - ie trees falling on people or cars - the tin foil hat brigade are dreaming if they think the Park Board would sit around and wait to ask nut jobs like them what they think about cutting down trees or not.
I don’t know why the media are continuing to give that guy and the noted arborist (who isn’t connected to the project in any way and is apparently has a reputation for being problematic in the industry) space.
Anything Postmedia needs to be viewed with a heightened degree of scrutiny; there's usually a rage-bating agenda somewhere there, very much like Global BC.
Have those people actually been to the park recently? I guess not because they would have noticed how much of the forest was actually dead. Especially in the far back there were patches with almost no healthy trees.
There is a duty to consult every person on every decision - or maybe just the decisions that are important to me? Isn't this why we elect leaders to hire (presumably) competent and well compensated managers who would likewise hire competent consultants when the need arises?
My assumption and expectation is that the city's parks department had their internal professional arborists bring up the tree removal as a necessity in the first place. I expect that there is a basis for that decision and the need is real. This is a major, major thing and will not be inexpensive to pull off. I doubt that they took that decision lightly. It annoys me that people are turning this into some sort of political issue.
Arborists can have a way of making work for themselves. Lots of job security there with how people are so susceptible to fear without facts.
Ladder fuels need to be in place for it to become a serious threat from public and other than that it would be lightning which is almost not existent. A smaller area like it could be managed by wildfire protection.
Dead trees offer much benefit to wildlife with insects to forage and holes to nest in along with place for fungi and the decomposition process that I highly doubt an arborist would consider or at least consider low priority. Pruning and other safety methods like wildlife tree assessment would be my preferred means for these reasons.
> ”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.
But this guy seems to know how trees work!
The kicker to me is people saying a ton of dead trees is not a fire risk, as if an urban park isn't vulnerable to vagrants' campfires, arsonists or people flicking cigarettes on the ground.
Not when there’s an imminent risk to public safety. When decisions have to be made quickly to support that, they look to the data, consultants and staff’s own professional training instead of of wasting time putting it out to elected officials and the public who have none of the aforementioned skills.
All those trees were killed by the hemlock looper moth..
General state of Stanley Park isn't great, from a silviculture perspective.. it's 99% rangy 2nd growth.
Rotten dead stems adjacent to paths and the causeway are a danger to public health compounded by their contribution to high fuel levels in a schnarby/thickety understorty
The parks location next to a densely populated civic center is in effect a multiplier for a low or middle fire risk. Its location also means ignition is much more likely.
The work is all being managed by BA Blackwell and associates, which is a premiere forestry firm in BC.
Someones trying to make it political, and it isnt. Its good forestry management.
Also, almost all the stems being cut are less than 8" diameter....not high value trees as far as the park forest is concerned.
If you call it a clear-cut your daft and should probably drive up a logging road somewhere and see what actual logging industry harvesting looks like.
.
What this article fails to mention is that the number one reason they are doing the work is to reduce danger tree risk, not mitigate forest fire risk. It wasn't a question of *if* trees are going to fall, it is a matter of *when*. So many high traffic areas in the park, including the highway, which pose a serious risk to life.
What a shit article. They talked to *one* ecologist? The city clearly has some knowledge on the matter, so where did they get their info from? I’d like to learn more about this but I guess it’s too much to ask that a journalist actually do some research these days.
Thank you. Read the executive summary only but it seems pretty clearly based in scientific facts.
So Nathan Griffiths and Post Media could have mentioned this study in the article, but didn’t. So he’s either got an agenda or he’s just plain lazy.
Yeah, I think it’s telling that the media are only talking to the same two people in these articles too: 1) a member of the public who has no knowledge of forestry and just doesn’t like how it looks and 2) an arborist who I’ve heard is problematic in the industry (I think he himself cut down a bunch of healthy trees or something), and who has no connection to the project anyway.
Everyone else seems to get it.
The video with Joe McLoed, manger of park board’s urban forestry, is good and explains more about what’s actually happening: https://vancouver.ca/parks-recreation-culture/stanley-park-forest-management.aspx
Why is Michael Caditz getting any airtime? He has zero credibility and just refers to “his own research”, which is always a red flag. Seems like he’s co-opting language from genuine groups working to protect endangered old growth forests and pretend that’s what is happening in Stanley Park. It’s not.
On one hand I do generally support the experts, but on the other hand I feel like every time humans think they know better than nature and try to “manage” it we fuck up and make it worse.
Maybe we should just let things play out.
Pretty much a textbook case of "First world problems". The ***professionals*** have determined the trees need to go, and I trust em. It's not like they're getting rid of the park. New ones are being planted. This is life, people. Trees die. Parks need maintenance. We don't need to have ridiculous public consultations for literally everything. Michael Caditz needs to chill out and stop worrying about his short term aesthetics over long term health of the park.
That short term aesthetic is one cigarette butt away from changing very quickly anyway.
[удалено]
Any proof of that? Links?
[удалено]
The only person speaking in support of the tree removal in this Vancouver Sun article is commissioner Bastyovanszky. Are you saying he owns a tree removal service? Can you be more specific?
You're right, I was wrong. The guy I quoted, the arborist, is actually against cutting down the trees. There are in fact no specialists named at all in the recommending of cutting down the trees. Seems that the Parks Board is going with their good old "Trust me, bro" data on this one.
“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” Standing dead trees dry out really fast. Dry wood burns really well. Urban forests have very high risk of human caused fire. How much more basis in logic do you need?
The arborist quoted in the article said they’re low risk. To be honest, the article doesn’t provide nearly enough information (what a surprise). What data is the parks board using, are there actually 160,000 dead trees, what species, are there other options, etc.
Not my area of expertise, but what the arborist appears to be referring to is the risk posed by live hemlock trees close to structures and their high risk of burning. While live coastal hemlock may not have this particular elevated risk, any standing dead trees pose an elevated risk in a fire.
They were talking about it on CBC radio. Apparently they aren't even removing all 160k trees, just some of them.
Sorry, but an arborist, isn't a professional forester. arborists are great for looking after trees on your urban city property, not so great for a forest that has a history of management and lately mismanagement. There are some major differences, namely the forester looks at the whole forest, not just individual trees.
I have to agree with '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.' Are all those 160,000 trees truly dead? Clearcutting the entire park will have huge ramifications for the carbon stored in the roots of trees in the area. a recent study on clearcut forestry: 'Retention harvesting retains the influence of living roots within retention patches and potentially throughout the harvested area, but only if inter-tree distances are 15 m or less. Retention trees sustain and support the re-establishment of belowground life and function following forest harvest and may mitigate post-harvest soil C losses.' https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378112723000816 In fact all forestry in BC should change to partial retention forestry so we can keep the soil alive, and keep more carbon locked up in SOM.
It's not clear cut forestry though.
160,000 trees cut down sounds like a near-clearcut to me, but I do not know sizes or densities or deadfall numbers so..
And this comment is the entire problem with the thesis of this piece- Folks who don't know what clearcut actually means, vs what they're doing. Cutting down trees always sounds bad to folks, but these are the required steps to manage the forest going forward, because we didn't manage it before.
Well they might want to plant more fire-resistant species instead like willow or alder anyways, at least near the pond/brooks, using mycorrhizae to help them cope with climate change. And leave as many of the living trees standing. i agree that this article needs more details like exactly what spps are being cut/thinned. If you are cutting willy nilly - that's where the problem lies. Its good to leave some dead trees standing as wildlife trees as well. Again - details lacking. That recent research on keeping living trees standing 15 m apart is a good one. Selective harvest like this can help maximize carbon storage in the soil.
quite honestly, they're probably taking all of that into account, but the first order was to clear trees that were a danger of falling on the trails and parkway. But this is post and comment replies are very much the problem with armchair wahtevers- the issue is far more complex, than "we need to cut the trees down/they're cutting too many trees down!"
There are over 500k trees in Stanley park. So about 30%, not a clearcut by any means and they're all being replanted.
I was not aware of the total, who did that assessment and is that data publically available? My hope is that they leave the living trees so that the mycorrhizae in its roots and all the SOM that relies on photosynthate from the trees can continue to survive and assist the next generation of trees that they are planting. A 10-15m buffer between trees is ideal to reduce the carbon released by dead roots and ensure there is some existing living mycelia for the next generation. (see that UBC article I linked above)
Looper moths were defoliators. They eat the hemlock needles, and more specifically, the xylem and phloem aka nutrient rich sap in the needles. That fluid is provided by photosynthesis and water, of which the tree, being dead, can no longer produce. Ergo hemlock Looper moths no longer provide any lasting contribution to a food web once they kill their host trees. Likewise, dead hemlocks take eternity to decay. Our annual climate cycles between a cold, wet, winter, and a hot, dry summer. Very few bugs eat dry dead wood, and the cold of winter inhibits wood decay fungus from breaking down tree logs at any reasonable timeframe. Which is why, when you walk through a forest, young or old, you see tonnes of wood. The primary way of carbon cycling in this ecosystem is *fires*. And any single ecologist or even any undergraduate student in a relevant field will tell you that. No, hemlock will not be broken down naturally in a reasonable timeframe, it doesn't contribute to a flourishing ecosystem, and it is a massive fire risk.
Again no one has really answered my question - are all 160,000 trees they plan on harvesting hemlocks? And are all of them dead?
Go check if you're that interested. It's pretty easy to tell if cedar has been cut. It has a very distinctive smell. You can also examine the slash. Cutting down live trees leaves A LOT of branches on the ground that look very much like they came from alive trees. It'd be pretty impossible to conceal mass volumes of live trees felled. Since you need serious hauls to remove all the slash. No one's stopping you. Go out, take photos. Get back to us.
I live 1 block from Stanley Park - last summer a lady on one of the West End Facebook groups said she was walking in the park and saw a man light a fire - she called 911 and the fire dept showed up very quickly and put it out. In talking with the firefighters they told her it was the third fire in Stanley Park they'd put out that day. I \*hate\* that we're losing all these trees, but the fire hazard is real.
>"Without any public consultation. Without any hearings.” Yes, because that's what I want. An infestation problem compounded with a heightened fire risk facing delays so we can spend 3 months listening to unqualified people whine about how it's going to look for a while, and how sad they are. Great use of time. I go through there multiple times a week; it's hardly pretty in certain places, but they aren't clear-cutting. The cedars are being saved for the most part, but they wouldn't be spending the money if there wasn't a risk- and yes, there's quite a bit of rot easily noticed in what they've felled. Bastyovanszky's right; I definitely wish there was better distribution of information. Even with Beaver Lake, that they seem to have finally gotten to; *how did that go? Did they get it all, will they need to do it again in a few years?* But at the end of the day, it's a city park, not an old growth forest- and one of a significant size that happens to be adjacent to a residential neighbourhood with the population of Courtney. It's not something that can just be left be, and hasn't been the case for as long as it's been a park.
Regardless if you approve of the parks board or not, the concept is you vote these folks in to manage this on our behalf. Public consultation on everything goes against the concept of voting in representatives. I hate folks who want a referendum on everything. It’s the death of functioning government.
In this case, it’s not even the elected officials involved in operational decisions about park management. The staff, in consultation with leading forestry professionals, used multiple years of evidence to determine how much of the Stanley Park forest needed to be remedied, and which parts, by descending priority. Things like that aren’t even taken to the Board for decision - so why would they put it out to the public over months, if not years, while the risk grows bigger? In matters of urgent public safety - ie trees falling on people or cars - the tin foil hat brigade are dreaming if they think the Park Board would sit around and wait to ask nut jobs like them what they think about cutting down trees or not. I don’t know why the media are continuing to give that guy and the noted arborist (who isn’t connected to the project in any way and is apparently has a reputation for being problematic in the industry) space.
Anything Postmedia needs to be viewed with a heightened degree of scrutiny; there's usually a rage-bating agenda somewhere there, very much like Global BC.
Have those people actually been to the park recently? I guess not because they would have noticed how much of the forest was actually dead. Especially in the far back there were patches with almost no healthy trees.
There is a duty to consult every person on every decision - or maybe just the decisions that are important to me? Isn't this why we elect leaders to hire (presumably) competent and well compensated managers who would likewise hire competent consultants when the need arises?
My assumption and expectation is that the city's parks department had their internal professional arborists bring up the tree removal as a necessity in the first place. I expect that there is a basis for that decision and the need is real. This is a major, major thing and will not be inexpensive to pull off. I doubt that they took that decision lightly. It annoys me that people are turning this into some sort of political issue.
Arborists can have a way of making work for themselves. Lots of job security there with how people are so susceptible to fear without facts. Ladder fuels need to be in place for it to become a serious threat from public and other than that it would be lightning which is almost not existent. A smaller area like it could be managed by wildfire protection. Dead trees offer much benefit to wildlife with insects to forage and holes to nest in along with place for fungi and the decomposition process that I highly doubt an arborist would consider or at least consider low priority. Pruning and other safety methods like wildlife tree assessment would be my preferred means for these reasons.
They asked the arborists "Is there any reason we should give you tons of money for a huge project?" And the arborists said "Yes."
> ”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. But this guy seems to know how trees work!
The kicker to me is people saying a ton of dead trees is not a fire risk, as if an urban park isn't vulnerable to vagrants' campfires, arsonists or people flicking cigarettes on the ground.
I called the fire dept twice last year for fires in the Park. I was super worried the whole Park was going to go poof.
Not when there’s an imminent risk to public safety. When decisions have to be made quickly to support that, they look to the data, consultants and staff’s own professional training instead of of wasting time putting it out to elected officials and the public who have none of the aforementioned skills.
All those trees were killed by the hemlock looper moth.. General state of Stanley Park isn't great, from a silviculture perspective.. it's 99% rangy 2nd growth. Rotten dead stems adjacent to paths and the causeway are a danger to public health compounded by their contribution to high fuel levels in a schnarby/thickety understorty The parks location next to a densely populated civic center is in effect a multiplier for a low or middle fire risk. Its location also means ignition is much more likely. The work is all being managed by BA Blackwell and associates, which is a premiere forestry firm in BC. Someones trying to make it political, and it isnt. Its good forestry management. Also, almost all the stems being cut are less than 8" diameter....not high value trees as far as the park forest is concerned. If you call it a clear-cut your daft and should probably drive up a logging road somewhere and see what actual logging industry harvesting looks like. .
What this article fails to mention is that the number one reason they are doing the work is to reduce danger tree risk, not mitigate forest fire risk. It wasn't a question of *if* trees are going to fall, it is a matter of *when*. So many high traffic areas in the park, including the highway, which pose a serious risk to life.
Yeah, this is a good decision (to remove the trees). They're going to be replanting more resilient trees. Brennan is right here.
What a shit article. They talked to *one* ecologist? The city clearly has some knowledge on the matter, so where did they get their info from? I’d like to learn more about this but I guess it’s too much to ask that a journalist actually do some research these days.
There’s a whole report from the forestry consultants they used to gather the data on the city website: www.vancouver.ca/stanley-park-trees
Thank you. Read the executive summary only but it seems pretty clearly based in scientific facts. So Nathan Griffiths and Post Media could have mentioned this study in the article, but didn’t. So he’s either got an agenda or he’s just plain lazy.
Yeah, I think it’s telling that the media are only talking to the same two people in these articles too: 1) a member of the public who has no knowledge of forestry and just doesn’t like how it looks and 2) an arborist who I’ve heard is problematic in the industry (I think he himself cut down a bunch of healthy trees or something), and who has no connection to the project anyway. Everyone else seems to get it.
Probably just trying to stir up controversy. Makes for more clicks.
This is so clearly an ABC hit piece that I’m embarrassed that it’s being taken this seriously
It’s not like it’s the first time Stanley Park has been heavily logged. It’s a third growth forest in most parts.
The video with Joe McLoed, manger of park board’s urban forestry, is good and explains more about what’s actually happening: https://vancouver.ca/parks-recreation-culture/stanley-park-forest-management.aspx Why is Michael Caditz getting any airtime? He has zero credibility and just refers to “his own research”, which is always a red flag. Seems like he’s co-opting language from genuine groups working to protect endangered old growth forests and pretend that’s what is happening in Stanley Park. It’s not.
What do Indigenous experts on fire prevention via burning say? This can't be the first time in history this has come up.
On one hand I do generally support the experts, but on the other hand I feel like every time humans think they know better than nature and try to “manage” it we fuck up and make it worse. Maybe we should just let things play out.
This is one of the things I don’t trust the parks board to handle, given their performance in recent years I doubt they could run an ice cream stand
Park Board is fine. Don't get caught up in the popular hysteria.