Approximately 25% of trees in Vancouver's Stanley Park will be cut down due to a hemlock looper infestation.
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Work at Vancouver's Stanley Park, which aims to cut down a total of 160,000 trees, is on schedule, according to a spokesperson word of the City Parks Commission.
About 25 percent of the park's trees, mostly western hemlocks, will be cut down due to a hemlock looper infestation.
Part of the work took place in the first half of December. The City will continue cutting down trees in January, which will cause road closures in the park.
The felling of 160,000 trees in Stanley Park has begun.
The forest is looking pretty bad right now, says Richard Hamelin, director of the Department of Forest and Conservation Sciences at the University of British Columbia.
Richard Hamelin is, however, reassuring. Forests are resilient. If it were located far from the city or the roads, you might think it was a natural forest that was regenerating, he adds.
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The hemlock looper is an insect native to North America . It feeds on coastal conifer species, making the Stanley Park hemlocks particularly vulnerable. The appearance of the insect is cyclical.
Due to an infestation that began approximately four years ago, the Vancouver Parks Commission made the decision to cut down a total of 160,000 trees.
Of these, 140,000 trees have a diameter of less than 20 centimeters. They are already dead and brown, and the Parks Commission says they will help fuel wildfires if left behind. The other 20,000 dead trees are more than 20 centimeters in diameter. Some of them will be left on site to regenerate the surrounding ecosystems.
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Trees were felled near Prospect Point in Stanley Park in Vancouver on December 18, 2023.
Richard Hamelin says biopesticides can eradicate the insect. But, in a park, this is not something you should do. Imagine the public's reaction if pesticides were sprayed in Stanley Park, he adds.
Visitors to Stanley Park interviewed noted the state of the forest. I wondered if it was necessary or unnecessary. […] I was quite shocked to see that trees were being cut down, says a Vancouver resident.
Sometimes you have to do things that may seem destructive in order to preserve future growth. […] It's not very pretty today, but we have to think about the future, says a resident of Nanaimo, British Columbia.
< p class="StyledBodyHtmlParagraph-sc-48221190-4 hnvfyV">The Parks Commission says the main goal is to prioritize tree removal in the busiest areas of the park Stanley, to ensure public safety and protect key infrastructure.
With information from the show The Early Edition and by Benoît Ferradini
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Natasha Kumar has been a reporter on the news desk since 2018. Before that she wrote about young adolescence and family dynamics for Styles and was the legal affairs correspondent for the Metro desk. Before joining The Times Hub, Natasha Kumar worked as a staff writer at the Village Voice and a freelancer for Newsday, The Wall Street Journal, GQ and Mirabella. To get in touch, contact me through my natasha@thetimeshub.in 1-800-268-7116
