Gabriola LTC is working with the organization to find solutions

Hope Lompe

Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Gabriola Sounder

“The large-scale removal of trees on residential properties throughout the Trust area is pretty discouraging,” said Robert Brockley, a retired forester with a 30 year career in the B.C. forest service and former president of the Gabriola Land and Trails Trust (GaLTT).

Brockley, who sits as the chair of GaLTT’s Covenant and Land Acquisition Committee, gave an address to the Islands Trust Local Trust Committee (LTC), outlining several clauses to do with conservancy and ecological protections he says have been removed from the original draft.

The Policy Statement project is on the Islands Trust website.

In early 2022, Brockley says GaLTT approached the conservancies and land trusts operating within the trust area to ask if they would agree to collaborate on review of a draft revision of the items trust policy statement that had recently been released for public comment.

At the time, Brockley says their review enthusiastically endorsed many of the commitments and policies aimed at protecting lands and waters in the trust area. They also provided several specific recommendations for improvement.

Three years later, many of the commitments and policies they enthusiastically endorsed were scrubbed from the new document.

“Three years have passed, and … sadly, it’s a very different and in our opinion, far less effective document than the previous draft,” said Brockley at the Nov. 20 LTC meeting. “Much of the language that the 11 Land Trusts enthusiastically endorsed in 2022 regarding stewardship is absent from the current draft.”

Ten conversancy organizations that operate within Islands Trust also signed off on the statement from Mayne, Salt Spring, Pender Islands, Thetis, Hornby, Denman, Lasqueti, Galiano, Gambier and Bowen Island.

Brockley said the previous document stated clear cutting or logging of old growth is inappropriate anywhere in the Trust area.

He adds the forest stewardship coordinating policy, which would advocate to the provincial government for Islands Trust to have jurisdiction to prohibit clear cutting and logging of old growth and regulate tree cutting has also been removed from the current craft. Also taken out was directive policy to designate “forest ecosystem reserves” where no extraction could take place.

“GaLTT is deeply disappointed that these important forest stewardship commitments and policies have been removed from the current draft policy statement,” said Brockley.

“The sensitive ecosystems of the Trust area are under intense pressure from population growth and the effects of climate change. Islands Trust clearly does not have the tools at its disposal to effectively carry out its preserve and protect mandate with respect to the environment.

In a follow up interview, Brockley said the Gabriola Islands Trustees have been receptive to his comments and are willing to work with him, and adds none of their concerns are criticisms of the Gabriola Trustees, and that this is meant to support them in bringing their recommendations to Trust Council. Since his presentation, he says there has been positive communication with Trustees, as well as the Islands Trust staff assigned to the Trust Policy Statement.

“I too am very sorry it was so watered down, and I’m just going to say that right now in public,” said Gabriola Islands Trustee Susan Yates at the Nov. 20 LTC meeting.

“So much of what they approved of … in the previous draft just disappeared, and it comes down to not whether it’s impossible, anything is possible if you have the political will to ask for it,” she added later.

In a follow up email, Yates expressed she is willing to revisit those sections of the Trust Policy Statement, because of the “dedicated, careful, collaborative, and valuable  work” GaLTT and 10 other Conservancies presented in one letter, rather than 11 separate letters.

“I want to re-visit the sections of the TPS that he refers to, mainly If other organizations and government agencies cooperated to that degree, our world would be a better place,” Yates writes.