Inside the Fight to Protect an Urban Forest in BC

'How can the self-proclaimed salmon capital of the world not act to protect the salmon-bearing creek?' asks a Campbell River advocate. … Article written by Sarah Cox.
Three years ago, Barb Round heard heavy machinery chewing through the urban forest behind her home in Campbell River, a small city on east Vancouver Island that bills itself as the salmon capital of the world.
Round waved down a man in a hard hat and asked why the excavator was working in the greenway, which is a haven for birds, dotted with pocket wetlands and adjacent to Simms Creek, home to four salmon species.
"He explained to me that the property had been sold," Round, a retired nurse, tells The Tyee. "Everyone in the neighbourhood thought it was protected land."
When residents found out a local developer planned to cut down much of the forest and fill in the wetlands to build a large housing development near the creek, "they were gobsmacked," Round says.
"It just makes me so mad," she says. "How can the self-proclaimed salmon capital of the world not act to protect the salmon-bearing creek?"
Since then, Round and more than 300 other Campbell River residents have sought every possible recourse to save the forest and wildlife corridor they call a "biodiverse urban gem."
They held community meetings and formed the grassroots Save Simms Creek Society. They sent hundreds of letters to Campbell River's city council, urging members to turn down an application from WestUrban Developments Ltd. to build 200 market rental housing units in three buildings on part of the city's cherished Simms Creek greenway.
They filed freedom of information requests and were shocked to discover the B.C. government had given the green light to the project last July, despite "substantial concerns" raised by government scientists. In January, community members served notice to the B.C. Environmental Appeal Board that they are appealing the government's decision.
"If we don't act to save these precious places, they will cease to exist," Round says.
The society's dogged effort to protect the forest isn't Nimbyism, she says, referring to a term used to describe local opposition to new neighbourhood developments.
"It's stewardship," Round says.
As B.C. communities grapple with an urgent need to build new housing, they also face climate-change-related issues such as flooding and drought and steep declines in salmon and other wildlife populations.
Urban forests lower temperatures during heat waves, soak up water during extreme rainfall events, confer numerous health benefits for people and provide homes for wildlife. But there are no provincial safeguards to preserve them in B.C.'s plan to expedite new housing.
And while the province does have rules to protect wetlands — which are key to tempering the effects of flooding — the story of Simms Creek illustrates how B.C.'s safety net for wetlands is full of holes.
One development in Campbell River might seem inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. But it shines a light on the bigger tensions gripping communities across the province — and underscores how wetlands and salmon-bearing creeks across the coast are dying by a thousand cuts.
For its part, the City of Campbell River told The Tyee that WestUrban's application is on hold, pending the "resolution" of provincial permits. The developer told The Tyee it has "no plans or schedule in place to commence any work" on the site.
'We are very tenacious'
Seen from the air, the Simms Creek watershed and greenway splashes through Campbell River's south end like a giant tadpole — bulbous where the greenway extends into the protected Beaver Lodge forest lands to the city's west, and then narrowing to a little upturned tail before butting up against the Discovery Passage in the Salish Sea.
The seven-hectare property in question, a tangle of trees and lush undergrowth, sits just before the tadpole's tail begins.
Streets with pastoral names like Meadowbrook Drive and Creekside Way form a widening swa...