This letter was sent by the Saanich Citizens for Resilient Environmental Stewardship (SCRES) to the CBRA over the weekend:
“On Monday, June 17th at 7:00pm, the Biodiversity Conservation Strategy will go to Council for consideration. We have an opportunity to tell Council what we would like this strategy to look like, or what we don’t like about the strategy that has been presented. We need to get this right. If we don’t get involved and speak up now, we may not be satisfied with the decisions that will be made. These decisions could have huge implications to private land.
Just over 2 years ago, Council appointed members to the Resilient Saanich Technical Committee. Their role was to provide scientific and technical advice to staff and the consultant (Diamond Head) in the Development of the Biodiversity Conservation Strategy. Unfortunately the RSTC was being pushed aside as early as June 2023, and then disbanded in December. They were unable to support the development of the Biodiversity Conservation Strategy as they should have. The Strategy is missing many of the programs the RSTC recommended.
Actions Requested by SCRES
Please write letters to all Council members, and/or attend the Council Meeting Monday June 17th at 7pm.
Please use the following information in your letter and your three-minute presentation to Council.
1) The return of the EDPA is stated as a priority in the Biodiversity Conservation Strategy even though Saanich information indicates that 90 percent of mapped Sensitive Ecosystems within the Urban Containment Boundary (UCB) occur in Saanich Parks and on other public lands. The 10 percent on private lands is based on mapping that the Resilient Saanich Technical Committee (RSTC) indicated consists of “out-of-date information, inaccuracies, contradictions, and overlapping designations.” This flawed mapping is still found on the Saanich Map GIS system. Lots of these properties are still lawn and garden under oak trees and not natural ecosystems. The wording for the priority action in the strategy is “Implement a development permit area (DPA) or zone for the protection of the natural environment.” This is despite the fact that the RSTC never reviewed the previous EDPA, and there has never been an assessment of the effectiveness of the original EDPA.
2) Saanich Parks are covered in invasive species and need significant restoration to return to a condition where they can be used to maintain natural Biodiversity. As well, they will need to be natural to be useful to be used for Hubs in a Habitat Network. The RSTC pointed this out, yet were ignored. The District of Saanich needs to lead by example and restore its lands before considering putting an EDPA on private lands forcing private landowners to enhance biodiversity when so little is being done on public lands, where all citizens will be contributing to enhancing biodiversity. The Saanich Parks Department is critically underfunded and has little ability to restore significant areas of our shared public lands and to protect species at risk. Most areas in the Parks system are degraded, covered in invasives and overused due to lack of access restrictions. The RSTC has called for new ecosystem mapping and ecological condition mapping in Saanich Parks. The RSTC indicated that Saanich Parks are the highest priority for biodiversity enhancement.
3) There is a need for a voluntary private land stewardship program to encourage and provide incentives and education for landowners who are willing to enhance biodiversity on their property or provide voluntary natural state covenants to protect biodiversity, especially in rural areas. Most of the private properties within the UCB no longer support natural ecosystems, as many of the Saanich Parks support. Saanich needs to work in collaboration with landowners to enhance their properties for biodiversity. SCRES supports landowners to fully engage in such a program so that the community can all work together to improve biodiversity in Saanich.
4) The strategy recommends Habitat Network (corridors) as a priority. This will require major acquisition of private lands with funding that should be used for restoring Saanich Parks. There is also the possibility of applying an EDPA to corridors and other parks of a Habitat Network. The wording provided regarding the Habitat Network in the strategy states: “There are a variety of methods to establish and maintain the integrity of this network, including private land acquisition, park designations through development, zoning, private land regulation, and natural state covenants.” This is very concerning, as the network is poorly mapped with unclear boundaries. This appears to be intentional.
If you have any questions please get in touch: saanichedpa@gmail.com
Urgent action on your part is needed. Please write Mayor and Council before noon Monday, June 17th.
Council@saanich.ca; mayor@saanich.ca; karen.harper@saanich.ca; colin.plant@saanich.ca; susan.brice@saanich.ca; nathalie.chambers@saanich.ca; judy.brownoff@saanich.ca; mena.westhaver@saanich.ca; zac.devries@saanich.ca; teale.phelpsbondaroff@saanich.ca
SCRES asks that you also attend the Council Meeting, Monday, June 17th at 7:00pm.
Link to the agenda for tomorrow with all the reports for the strategy.“
Saanich Citizens for Resilient Environmental Stewardship (SCRES)
Here is a copy of SCRES’s letter to Council:
Mayor and Council
Staff’s report to Council for the Biodiversity Conservation Strategy (BCS) states the RSTC played an important role in developing the BCS. Council appointed the RSTC to provide scientific and technical advice, yet much of this comprehensive advice is not included in the BCS.
SCRES has provided many of the RSTC’s comprehensive recommendations in an Appendix to this letter. Most of these recommendations are missing from the final BCS report.
SCRES provides the following commentary:
The return of the EDPA is stated as a priority in the Biodiversity Conservation Strategy even though Saanich information indicates that 90 percent of mapped Sensitive Ecosystems within the Urban Containment Boundary (UCB) occur in Saanich Parks and on other public lands. The 10 percent on private lands (1% of total land mass) is based on mapping that the Resilient Saanich Technical Committee (RSTC) indicated consists of “out-of-date information, inaccuracies, contradictions, and overlapping designations.” This flawed mapping is still found on the Saanich Map GIS system. Lots of these properties are still lawn and garden under oak trees and not natural ecosystems. The wording for the priority action in the strategy is “Implement a development permit area (DPA) or zone for the protection of the natural environment.”
The RSTC never reviewed, nor provided an analysis of the previous EDPA, except to point out the very flawed mapping. This is the mapping that still exists on Saanich Map GIS. Also, there has never been a full assessment of the effectiveness of the original EDPA. What exactly was protected? What was restored? Was it an effective program?
Saanich Parks are covered in invasive species and need significant restoration to return to a condition where they can be used to maintain natural Biodiversity. As well, they will need to be natural to be useful to be used for Hubs in a Habitat Network. The RSTC pointed this out yet were ignored. The District of Saanich needs to lead by example and restore its parks before considering putting an EDPA on private lands forcing private landowners to enhance biodiversity. The Saanich Parks Department is critically underfunded and has little ability to restore significant areas of our shared public lands and to protect species at risk. Most areas in the Parks system are degraded, covered in invasives and overused due to lack of access restrictions. The RSTC has called for new ecosystem mapping and ecological condition mapping in Saanich Parks. The RSTC indicated that Saanich Parks are the highest priority for biodiversity enhancement.
There is a need for a voluntary private land stewardship program to encourage and provide incentives and education for landowners who are willing to enhance biodiversity on their property or provide voluntary natural state covenants to protect biodiversity, especially in rural areas. Most of the private properties within the UCB no longer support natural ecosystems. Saanich needs to work in collaboration with landowners to enhance their properties for biodiversity. SCRES supports landowners to fully engage in such a program so that the community can all work together to improve biodiversity in Saanich.
The strategy recommends Habitat Network (corridors) as a priority. This will require major acquisition of private lands, and then restoration activities with funding that would be better used restoring Saanich Parks.
There is also the possibility of applying an EDPA to corridors and other parts of a Habitat Network. The wording provided regarding the Habitat Network in the strategy states: “There are a variety of methods to establish and maintain the integrity of this network, including private land acquisition, park designations through development, zoning, private land regulation, and natural state covenants.” This is very concerning, as the network is poorly mapped with unclear boundaries. This appears to be intentional.
SCRES fully supports:
· A comprehensive Voluntary Private Land Stewardship Program to follow up on the Council’s original motion and the RSTC support for this stewardship program.
· A comprehensive assessment and restoration program for Saanich parks.
- Implementation of the RSTC’s comprehensive recommendations, not their recommendations listed in the Biodiversity Conservation Strategy. (The RSTC was given no choice but to choose recommendations from the list drafted by Diamond Head.)
SCRES is a non-registered society established in 2015. In 2018 SCRES has a following of supporters in excess of 1000. This number has grown over the past year. SCRES supports resilient environmental stewardship and management of sensitive ecosystems that is supported by science.
Saanich Citizens for Resilient Environmental Stewardship (SCRES)
Appendix
The Resilient Saanich Technical Committee (RSTC) Comprehensive Recommendations:
One (1): In a motion of January 2022, The RSTC has indicated that there is a need for a new Terrestrial Ecosystem Mapping/Sensitive Ecosystem inventory within the UCB, which should include the full assessment of ecological condition within each of the Saanich Parks. No subsequent action has occurred by staff. The motion suggested that the priority for mapping of natural areas would be within the UCB and Saanich Parks.
The Resilient Saanich Technical Committee (RSTC) said the following in their documents from the 2023-08-17 RSTC Meeting:
A severe limitation is that we still do not have a good understanding of how much biodiverse area we have, where it is, and its condition. This was a failure of the State of Biodiversity Report, and before we can realistically strategize about protecting and enhancing, we need those details as well. Therefore, the first task within the strategy is to call for developing and funding a plan for collecting this information in priority areas and ecosystems.
The District lacks biodiversity and ecological data needed to set stewardship targets and evaluate progress. This is needed to prioritize stewardship actions. A commitment and funding for inventorying, mapping and rehabilitating ecosystems in our parks over a ten-year time frame, and a call for developing a plan with staff and resources to accomplish that.
Accurate and regularly updated ecosystem and biodiversity mapping are critical to develop and track metrics for stewardship and, more broadly, biodiversity. The District needs to have sufficient GIS and biodiversity inventory staffing to regularly update mapping and track metrics.
Two (2): The Resilient Saanich Technical Committee (RSTC) said the following in their documents from the 2023-08-17 RSTC Meeting:
What does the RSTC want to see in the Biodiversity Conservation Strategy: A call for a comprehensive staffed and funded program for managing species at risk in Saanich including in Rural Saanich.
Three (3): The Resilient Saanich Technical Committee (RSTC) said the following in their documents from the 2023-08-17 RSTC Meeting:
- “Saanich parks staff and their Pulling Together volunteers cannot keep up with the removal of invasive species in parks, let alone fulsomely enhance and restore biodiversity across parks and non-park public lands. Additional staffing to coordinate stewardship of park land should be seriously considered.
- Saanich does a poor job “stewarding” parks and boulevards/rights-of-way. It also does not encourage the local community to steward public lands in their own areas. The District likes to point out how many volunteer hours are contributed via Pulling Together but can’t or won’t acknowledge how much parkland has been “restored” or put it in the context of how much remains to be “restored”.
- To set a positive stewardship example for private landowners, the District must show it is committed to enhancing biodiversity and ecosystem condition in all public lands. This will likely require additional District staffing.
- Commit to maintain and publish ecological conditional assessments as a baseline for assessing future stewardship programs.
- Affirm the need to ensure sufficient District staffing to support stewardship and increase restoration efforts on public lands (including public rights of way and boulevards), and to facilitate stewardship on private properties.
- Enhanced stewardship programs should also include quantitative metrics, and like objectives and targets, metrics will vary by program. Without metrics, the ability to assess success of efforts over time and space will not be possible. Include metrics to assess the effectiveness of different stewardship approaches with respect to ecological condition and biodiversity on public and private lands and commit to monitor and report their effectiveness.
- Appropriate goals and targets are needed, and the effectiveness of programs needs to be monitored. Target areas at risk of imminent loss, biodiversity hotspots and public and private land hosting ecosystems and species at risk.
- Overall, Saanich needs to ensure there is sufficient staff capacity to improve biodiversity in parks and non-park public land, proactively develop, encourage, and incentivize stewardship programs on both public and private lands.
- Need to see a strategy that has clear targets, metrics to measure progress, a regular reporting framework and strong arguments to get council to adopt a quantitative approach to biodiversity conservation.”
Four (4): The Resilient Saanich Technical Committee (RSTC) said the following in their documents from the 2023-08-17 RSTC Meeting:
“The District currently lacks a municipal-level and comprehensive Stewardship Plan which should encourage residents to voluntarily steward biodiversity on their properties and on public lands through positive publicity, financial incentives based on meeting appropriate biodiversity targets, and other approaches. Establishment of backyard biodiversity enhancement as a public priority.
Five (5): The Resilient Saanich Technical Committee (RSTC) said the following in their documents from the 2023-08-17 RSTC Meeting:
‘Protection’ involves more than simply designating an area and restricting uses in it. Our parks are a good example where the internal ecosystems are not protected from either over-use by people or from being overwhelmed by invasive plants, especially invasive grasses. These impacts occur in the absence of active management of these areas and are very seriously threatening the values that the parks are meant to protect. These facts need to be recognized, and the strategy needs to call for the establishment and funding of management plans for the priority parks that will help halt or even reverse the detrimental changes that are now taking place within them.
What does SCRES think about the impact that construction and natural habitat loss caused by human encroachment has on the environment?