Stanley Park has always been a sanctuary for city dwellers, a retreat from the hustle and bustle of urban life, an attraction for tourists because of its natural beauty, one of the last remaining native coastal hemlock old growth forests, and a proud model of a semi-wild ecosystem within a metropolis. It is the pride of Vancouver, Vancouver's crown jewel, and one important reason many choose to make this city home.

Stanley Park is a National Historic Site of Canada.

For hundreds of years the lush forest trails have provided Vancouverites and visitors a serene escape, but now they are marred by the sights and sounds of the highway as trees are being felled hour by the hour.

Logging in Stanley Park is not just affecting our personal experiences; it is also causing irreversible damage to our environment. Forests play a crucial role in mitigating climate change by absorbing carbon dioxide emissions. According to Natural Resources Canada, forests absorb about 2.6 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide annually, equivalent to about 1/3rd of CO2 emissions from human activities worldwide.

Moreover, deforestation destroys biodiversity as it elmiminates habitat for countless species that call these forests home. In British Columbia alone, over 1,400 species at risk depend on forests for their survival.

The City of Vancouver and the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation seek to remove the native coastal western hemlock forest and replace it with a tree farm plantation of Douglas fir, cedar, and red alder. This will attract the Douglas fir beetle.

In addition to logging, at least one Park Board commissioner advoates killing future seedlings. Their justification is that 160,000 hemlocks defoliated by the native western hemlock looper must be removed to protect people and property from fire and falling trees.

They claim that hemlock snags which show no signs of structural instability, which is the case with the overwhelming majority of trees being removed, will "someday" be dangerous. However, the City of Vancouver has failed to provide credible scientific evidence to substantiate this speculative claim.

The problems with the justification for this logging operation are numerous:

• The science (and common sense) tells us that the risk of fire in a wet rainforest is low, especially where there are water lines and hydrants throughout as is the case in Stanley Park.
• The science tells us that coniferous trees such as hemlocks normally decompose vertically rather than fall over, thus putting people at minimal risk.
• The Vancouver Park Board as a democratically elected board of commissioners is supposed to represent the citizens of Vancouver rather than merely rubber stamp the agenda of city employees as it has done.
• There is the appearance of conflict of interest because the logging contracts were awarded to the same contractor that "assessed" the park and made recommendations, meaning that the values of the contracts were proportional to the work recommended.
• Much of the money paid to the contractor was obtained secretly, and the shady transactions were only discovered because of the lawsuit we, the Stanley Park Preservation Society, filed to stop the logging.

Snags are a vital part of the ecosystem, providing habitat for many species. Removing snags disrupts root systems of nearby trees.

In recent windstorms, mostly living cedars and maples were blown over, not the hemlock snags targeted by this logging operation. This provides strong disconfirming evidence for the theory that the trees the City of Vancouver is targeting for removal are dangerous.

 

 

 

 

 

If a particular dead or weakened tree, properly assessed and documented, indeed poses a threat of falling on roads or paths, that particular tree can be topped or removed—we have no objection to that. We do object to the wholesale removal of tens of thousands of trees which have not been properly inspected and are likely safe. Moreover, we object to the misguided scheme of converting Stanley Park to a plantation of selectively bred trees laced with insecticide.

ALL CLAIMS MADE IN THIS PETITION AND UPDATES ARE EITHER FACTUAL OR ARE THE OPINIONS OF THE AUTHORS

We need your help to preserve Stanley Park's natural beauty and ecological integrity for future generations. Please sign this petition calling on the City of Vancouver to halt logging activities in Stanley Park immediately.

We have filed a legal petition in the Supreme Court of British Columbia to stop the destruction of Stanley Park. Our costs are substantial. 

We cannot use funds donated here on this change.org site for our legal expenses. Rather:

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