To the editor:
I am a very concerned about wildlife habitat, including trees well over 300 years old, being destroyed this week on Sutherland Road. This is the height of nesting season for birds, but also baby beaver kits, muskrats, etc.
I talked to one of the men removing the trees and he said it was for flood prevention but the creek is at a normal volume several feet below the crest, and large trees help keep the sides from eroding. Then he said it was so the dredgers could have access to clean up debris to prevent flooding. I then said, “why couldn’t the creek have been done by hand not only saving the old trees but not killing any animals? or was the point to kill all the beaver families with babies with the dredgers as an easy ‘one time fix?” The tree removal guy thought that this was actually the point of the dredgers and came to understand my despair.
If the city had a crew clean up the creek by hand it would have created much needed jobs in Kelowna, saved a ton of money for tax payers paying for large crews and equipment to remove the trees and do the dredging, but most importantly it would have saved hundreds of lives of our park animals.
It is the cold-hearted people making these decisions that remind me daily why we are currently in the world’s largest mass extinction and that humans truly are the biggest parasite on the planet. At what time will we start to share the planet and finally let the animals have some dignity and quality of life? It is already too late for billions of animals.
This is the information that I am requesting from the city asap:
1) I ask to know how much it cost tax payers for the work on Sutherland as a home owner and a tax payer?
2) I ask to see the environmental assessment that allowed all the ancient trees to be cut down along with hundreds of nesting baby birds, and also allowed all the creeks to be dredged without the safe removal of wildlife such as baby beavers resulting in their murder. I would like to know the name of the person responsible who signed off on this genocide.
3) If there was no environmental assessment who was the main person to sign off on this? Was our mayor aware? This needs to be public knowledge.
This was a despicable act of animal cruelty, and I have no intention of letting this act be forgotten.
Dee Holt
Kelowna