Thank you for your editorial “EDPA bylaw creates hostile environment”. Coun. Colin Plant touches on the underlying problem, in saying he has faith that people won’t destroy their own environment.
The EDPA is based on an ideology that not only assumes humans will, but considers us parasites (see the editorial in the inaugural issue of The Ecologist magazine for one example of many). Eco-activists tend to be obsessive, for example, one well-known local group considers seasonal puddles to be part of a Garry oak ecosystem. The EDPA is not about preserving “natural beauty” but about preserving a specific configuration of vegetation created by humans, one that is transitional.
Saanich’s EDPA has the bizarre feature of blocking human development to preserve the results of human use of the land several hundred years ago – the Garry oak meadows created by tribal people to increase production of food in the open space and in the resulting interface shrubbery where deer live and feed. The natural state of Garry oak is forest that will be supplanted by Douglas fir, as happened in Metchosin, except perhaps for areas of many rocky outcrops. Those early farmers created and maintained the meadows with fire.
Saanich staff behave as though they want to force landowners to have botanical gardens, with species plentiful elsewhere but marginal here at the limit of their range. Garry oak trees, Arbutus trees, and the blue gray taildropper slug are plentiful to the south. Populations will vary as climate varies – that’s life.
And Saanich callously put the burden on the backs of property owners by failing to get their boots on the ground and verify their analysis, as recommended by the source of the raw data.
Indeed, people take care of their property – look around to see the gardens and diversity in landscaping. You’ll see Himalayan cedars, black oaks and elms. But you’ll have to get on your hands and knees to find the little slugs and sharp-tailed snakes, they aren’t rare but like to stay hidden, refusing to report for census.
So the question is, why are Saanich staff and politicians initiating force against honest humans to create something that isn’t natural by their use of the term nor sustainable? I say it’s a question of ethics determined by a view of humans.
Keith Sketchley
Saanich