Surrey resident Linda Kreutz said she was devastated to see what was once forest on two adjacent lots on 127th Street in Whalley reduced to logs.
“It’s destroying our community and it’s for money, it’s for greed, and I just think it’s wrong.”
More than 100 trees on the lots were recently cut down to make way for a new development of 11 single-family homes. Many of Kreutz’s neighbours are also not happy with the city-approved clearcut.
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“It’s pretty gross when it first happened,” Scott Carlson said. “it’s just a nice little foresty area and now it’s gone and it’s just logs and kind of sad.”
“It’s terrible, really terrible. This used to be a really nice street and look at it now,” added Walter Karpiuk, who has lived in the area for 50 years.
As Surrey’s billion-dollar building boom continues, the Whalley neighbourhood is just the latest to lose trees this year. Back in March, Ray Griffith discovered at least a dozen trees chopped down for infrastructure upgrades not far from his backyard on Glen Avon Drive near the south end of the Port Mann Bridge.
“We seem to be going backwards…where is it going to stop?” he asked.
He and Kreutz say the City of Surrey’s tree bylaw needs to be tougher. The City of Vancouver amended its protection of trees bylaw more than two years ago to maintain a healthy urban forest. Surrey’s tree protection bylaw was enacted in 2006 but many feel it’s not living up to its name. The City of Surrey was unable to provide numbers to Global News on Canada Day, but according to the Surrey Leader newspaper, 28 per cent more trees were cut down in the city last year over 2014, mainly due to land being cleared for homes.
Surrey councillor Mike Starchuk, who also chairs the city’s Environmental Sustainability Committee, says they are in the process of editing the tree bylaw to ensure the city’s tree canopy is addressed with today’s climate and financial resources in mind.
“We’re taking a look at the trees that are out there and we’re taking a look at what we can do to manage the amount of people that are coming to this city in a way that protects as many trees that are there and when we can’t protect those that we can plant them elsewhere in the city to keep the canopy growing,” he said.
Surrey’s updated and improved tree protection bylaw will include higher prices and fines. Until then, the city’s vision of being a thriving, green, inclusive city may mean losing a bit of nature in the process.
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