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EDITORIAL: Mount Douglas Park a Saanich treasure worth preserving

Is it possible to have too much of a good thing? The latest park plan released by the Mount Douglas Park Society certainly indicates that could be a very distinct possibility.
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Is it possible to have too much of a good thing? The latest park plan released by the Mount Douglas Park Society certainly indicates that could be a very distinct possibility.

“There has been a significant increase in the number of visitors in the park, and it has really resulted in what we think is a serious degradation in the park’s natural state,” said Mount Douglas Park Society president Darrell Wick. He made the comments during the presentation of the latest park plan to Saanich council – a presentation that carried an appeal to address the strain the region’s growing population is placing on natural areas like Mount Douglas Park.

“A lot of trail are really in a bad condition…and there is a proliferation of uncontrolled ad-hoc trails,” he said. “All of that really has to be addressed, and I think it has to addressed soon.”

But the park’s problems aren’t confined to just the trails. Just last month a pair of incidents highlight the threat to the 188-hectare park which features 21 kilometres of trails running through the largest urban forest on the Saanich Peninsula.

The Saanich News published a photo showing a parks working cleaning up a mound of litter that had been discarded in the park over a single weekend. Only days later a public works employee noticed a suspicious youth who had brought a can of gasoline into the park in order to ignite a fire.

The park, which was established in 1858 by Governor James Douglas, is a treasure not only to the residents of Saanich but the region as a whole. We can only hope that council, along with the citizens they represent, will view the park plan as a call to action.

The society’s request for better education and a change in enforcement by Saanich should be viewed as the minimum required action, with the park plan now being forwarded to district staff as part of a review into the future of the park.

Building a better future for Mount Douglas Park is something the entire community should get behind, as the park will continue to be inexorably linked with Saanich’s natural beauty.