David Suzuki says development schemes like the recent PNE/Entertainment Centre Proposal will "KILL BURNS BOG FOREVER"
Protect Forever Vancouver's Biggest Remaining Urban Wilderness Photo credit: Graham Osborne
The champions of Burns Bog's immeasurably valuable wildness have for many years fought one battle after another against an array of destructive development schemes ranging from ambitious to totally off-the-wall.
It's about time conservation won the war.
Burns Bog, the biggest wilderness left in urban Vancouver, would have been destroyed by the PNE-entertainment-theme park plan proposed by the B.C. Government in early February, says Dr. David Suzuki, scientist, author, broadcaster, head of the David Suzuki Foundation and world renowned spokesman for nature.
"As far as I'm concerned, this great wetland is a single, living organism," he says. "As a biologist, I think it's absurd to say it can be cut in two and survive."
The recent Disney type development proposal included a site for the PNE, theme park, amphitheatre, film production facility and possibly housing. Like other mega-development plans before it (including a 1980s proposal for a deep sea port and industrial site, a 1988 proposal for a 100,000-person city, and a 1992 proposal for a race track) this plan requires vast amounts of sand and gravel overfill and other services. Suzuki maintains, "How can you fill, pave and build on part of Burns Bog, provide a road network, bring in traffic that pollutes the air, change the water flows, and expect the rest of the bog to maintain its integrity?"
Over the centuries, Suzuki says, the world's bogs have become known as slimy, soggy, creepy places-useless wetlands to be "reclaimed". Yet in North America, bogs are one of the most endangered ecosystems, despite their great value as cleaners of the air and water and homelands for rare plant and animal life.
Burns Bog is believed to be the largest and most valuable bog on the entire continent. As well as being home to a remarkable array of wildlife and vegetation, from sandhill cranes to carnivorous plants, the bog absorbs great amounts of greenhouse gases and stores and filters pollutants from rain water.
While much of the bog remains largely intact, it already has some ugly scars. The area is zoned for agricultural and industrial use. Around its edges are peat mining and cranberry fanning and, on the west side, Vancouver and Delta operate a dump for millions of tonnes of garbage.
As many as nine private landfills are licensed along River Road at the north side of the bog. These private dumps continue to operate despite many reports of broken Ministry of Environment rules. They receive large amounts of industrial waste, including normally prohibited materials such as gyproc wallboard.
Pollutants include smelly hydrogen sulphide gas, methane, and toxic leachates, which dribble into the bog's ditches and feed into the Fraser River.
It was foolish of the Provincial Government to assume that the public would endorse its half-baked plan to save only part of the bog and allow a mega-commercial development to plug up the rest of the "lungs of Greater Vancouver". Two weeks after its announcement-following unprecedented public outcry and unanimous rejection of the plan by Delta Council-the Province, thankfully, backed off. But the bog is not yet saved.
Protecting Burns Bog will take a massive switch-around in thinking: tight environmental controls and buffer area zoning to prevent death by leaching poisons; an end to any more development within the bog itself; a phase-out of current ecosystem-wrecking land uses like garbage dumps and cranberry farms; the acquisition of private lands; and the designation of the whole bog as a Regional or Class A Provincial Park.
To redeem itself the B.C. government must make public amends and arrange the deal to buy back Burns Bog now. This will require cooperation and commitment from all levels of government-- federal, provincial and local--for they all have responsibilities and interests in the bog. It will also require establishing a process to determine a fair price--based on current land use and zoning, not pie-in-the-sky development schemes. A government that has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to cover fast ferry-building cost overruns and to bail out a bankrupt pulp mill can't possibly say it has no cash on hand to put towards acquiring the bog as a park. Continued public pressure to "buy the bog" will surely loosen the purse strings.
Do you want Burns Bog--the last large, wildlife-rich urban wilderness in North America--fully protected, as wildlife sanctuary, a protector of environmental quality and a quiet retreat forever? If so, speak up now!
