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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, 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.
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 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 threatens biodiversity as it destroys habitats 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 Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation, from its perpetually-locked doors at 2099 Beach Avenue, trumpets its public-consumption narrative that 160,000 trees killed or weakened by the western hemlock looper moth must be removed to protect people and property from fire and falling trees. However, the City has failed to provide scientific evidence to substantiate its claim; further, many living seemingly-healthy trees are being cut down.
To the contrary, this claim is refuted by many experts to whom we’ve spoken. The looper moth has been a member of the Stanley Park ecosystem on an (approximately) eleven year cycle for millennia. It indeed attacks and kills or damages some trees, but such trees themselves play their part in the forest ecosystem and become homes for woodpeckers and other wildlife. If particular dead or weakened trees pose a threat of falling on roads or paths, those particular trees can be topped or removed–but there are not 160,000 trees which pose such a threat.
We need your help to preserve Stanley Park’s natural beauty and ecological integrity for future generations. Please sign this petition calling on local authorities to halt logging activities in Stanley Park immediately, until such time that the City of Vancouver provides substantive scientific evidence to justify this massive logging operation, if indeed any such evidence exists.
