Dear Saanich Residents,

“Mother Nature and I are one, bonded by the morning sun.
Together, we walk down a green road, turn the corner and our hearts explode:
No vegetation to be seen and the land is left in a terrible scene.
This is where our paths depart, and it is here my duty starts.
Out of my bags, I pull my shovel, making an effort to repair the puzzle.
I am blessed by the mother. ”

This poem was written when I was 19 years old, and a tree planter, and we were working in MacKenzie B.C., in the interior of the province. MacKenzie is the home of the largest tree crusher in the world. It was used to steamroll trees growing in the valley bottoms of what became the Williston Reservoir after completion of the WAC Bennett Dam near Hudson’s Hope.

If you are lost and want to find yourself in the woods, going tree planting is a good thing for everyone to try, once. There are many parts of this story that I will leave out, like the part about missing the barge out because we were not finished planting and having to wait a week in a burned clear cut, with very limited supplies with crazy biting horse flies and no-see-ums. I had the experience of living on a burned and abused piece of land and witnessed the impacts it had on myself and the crew.

The poem refers to driving down tree-lined logging roads in the crummy (a converted truck used to transport tree planters) and turning the corner onto clear-cut, burned, moonscape as far as the eye could see.

This land was sick, devoid of vegetation, and most wildlife. Birds that were there seemed to be flying in circles with no place to go, looking for nests in trees that were no longer there.

This experience was like a record playing over for a few years in a loop, a short circuit. After promising myself I would never, never do that again, every spring I started to get the tree planter’s restless twinge.

I learned that tree planters suffer amnesia and forget the worst of it. The blisters, burns, bug bites, and vehicle breakdowns, and instead remember the great connections you make with strangers that become like family; you trust them with your life and share your deepest secrets. You eat good food, make money, and see the province.

The romantic version of doing fly-in contracts was soon replaced by the reality: we were not replacing forests; we were planting monocultures into ecosystems that had lost their biodiversity and keystone species and no longer functioned.

There was a lack of synergy between the aerobic and anaerobic interaction ecosystems generate.

My experiences as a tree planter were foundational and clearly defined and directed my life and studies.

The clear cuts I worked in evoked an emotional response inside me of deep despair. They were a horror of burned land and, in some cases, still smoking slash piles of burning logs, no wildlife. At the end of the day nostrils, the corners of your eyes, mouths, and bodies caked in a charred black tar.

This feeling of helplessness was compounded by the realization that in fact, I was not changing the world – I was part of the problem. By replanting trees, I was making the clear-cut logging industry seem sustainable.

Ecological restoration is instead about maintaining and restoring ecosystem function, keystone species, and sustainability. It is about finding opportunities to emulate nature.

My learning/education about the sacred ecology of these lands is derived from a my UVIC studies, First Nations studies, being a farmer in Saanich for more than 23 years practicing agroecology/ecological restoration and advocating for best practices in my job as a Saanich Councillor.

Regenerating ecosystems, propagating trees, creating and participating in land use practices that enhance biodiversity, create and extend biodiversity /wildlife corridors are personal actions that I take to alleviate my environmental concerns.

I became a politician to re-implement the biodiversity and urban forestry strategies.

It was supposed to take six months! Now, after seven years, they have both just been unanimously approved by council.

I should be very happy about this.

Before I continue, I want to emphasize that all my remarks are my own and are not a critique of staff. Council direct staff via our one employee, the CAO (Chief Administrative Officer).

Saanich Municipality has enjoyed a provincially renowned legacy of environmental protection (built on the exemplary works of Saanich Residents, staff, and former councils) and is known by the words Sustainable Saanich. However, because there has been an erosion of environmental protections over the last two terms, I have become increasingly concerned about our ability to maintain this status.

Most of these changes occurred when the public was out of the council chambers and were recommendations coming from the former mayor’s Standing Group On Housing. Many of these changes were also lobbied for by the development community and represent subsidies and reductions of community/public amenities. I was in opposition to all of these changes.

Here are some examples of the loss of environmental protections:

Last term the Environmental Services Department and Planning Department, once married together to symbolize our commitment to sustainable development and a common future, were separated. The small contingent of Environmental Services staff were diffused into the Parks Department, leaving the Planning Department without any staff to assess the environmental impacts of development applications on private land.

Last term the environmental protections on private property that had been in place since 2012 were rescinded.

The most recently adopted Official Community Plan did not contain the Biodiversity and Urban Forestry Strategies.

The just-approved Biodiversity Strategy and Urban Forestry Strategy are poorly funded and there is no long-term guarantee they will be fully implemented.

Local Area Plans, which contain specialized neighborhood approved plans and environmental policies, were decoupled from the new Official Community Plan. This undermines 100+ years of civic engagement because Official Community Plans are legally binding, and the formerly integrated Local Area Plans were enforceable bylaws. Local Area Plans have now effectively been downgraded to resolutions.

This term, the provincial government took over municipal government zoning and cemented in that there was no environmental protection on private property. This means that up to 90% of Saanich private property does not have any environmental protection.

Approximately 4,610 homes have been targeted in Saanich by the Province’s housing goals. A majority of Saanich council voted to not only meet these targets but to exceed them. Single-family lots can now have 4-6 homes, or a 3-story building, or even up to 26 stories inside the Urban Containment Boundary.

More than 500,000 trees within the Urban Containment Boundary are at risk of being cut because of the Province’s housing targets. The just-approved Urban Forestry Strategy is about removing trees and replacing them over 40 years. This means we could lose 538,000 trees within the Urban Containment Boundary in the immediate future and slowly replace them over four decades.

Lands outside the Urban Containment Boundary are not exempt from the Province’s Bill 44, 46, 46, despite a unanimously voted motion from Saanich Municipality to exclude them.

Because housing is how Saanich derives approximately 77% of its tax revenue, the incentive to build is intense. Provincial lobbying and Saanich council lobbying when the public was out of the chambers during COVID played a significant role in determining these housing targets. The public were locked out, but the development community remained and were still making recommendations – recommendations that were adopted by a majority of council when public participation was at its lowest.

It is, in my opinion, impossible to have sustainable land use without environmental protection during development. Approximately 90% of the imperiled Coastal Douglas-Fir ecosystem persists on private property. Transferring carbon sinks, wetlands, sensitive ecosystems for endangered species, and natural areas into paved, impervious surfaces is not sustainable.

Saanich residents all live in a nationally renowned biodiversity hotspot. Transferring 14,000 years of culturally derived biodiversity based on the land use practices of the Coast Salish Peoples into pipes and pavement is a massive loss and, in the end, does not truly address the housing affordability crisis.

The corporate, anthropocentric worldview that sees the highest and best use of ecosystems as housing developments needs to change and start considering other species beyond humans.

Yours in conservation

Natalie Chambers