By Cheryl Jahn

City needs green spaces

Dec 12, 2023 | 2:29 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – Prince George residents love the great outdoors, especially our trees. A pair of presentations from UNBC students in the Environmental Sciences program had a couple of concepts, starting with the importance of green spaces, a sentiment shared by local tree advocate James Steidle.

“I think we’re losing a lot of green space around the city. A lot of it seems to me to be unnecessary as far as providing housing is concerned. So we’re standing here at the end of 22nd Avenue on one of the trails that is considered part of Ginter’s Green. And there’s recently quite a bit of forest that was cut down here. And you know, we argued that. I mean, I think it looks like they cut down 100% of the trees on the on the block goes without saying.”

“We live in Prince George,” says Mayor Simon Yu. “We took some of the things for granted because we always thought, wow, we’ve got a lot of trees. So what’s the point here of that? The key is a better design.”

This was an unprecedented year for bears in the city. The issue of bear-resistant garbage cans once again. The idea was piloted several years ago and was found to be ineffective.

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“There are numerous examples of other communities in Alberta and in B.C. who have large bear populations, large urban bear populations, and they managed to do it without killing an excess of 150 bears in one season.,” says Jenn Matthews, a nature enthusiast.

And speaking of critters like bears, the presentation to Council also noted the need for wildlife corridors.

“There’s a lot of really critical wildlife habitat like along the Fraser River and the corridors for the animals that went down there weren’t respected when we did a lot of that development on the lower bench,” says Steidle. “And I think that that sort of stuff has to be considered in the planning. The urban planning in our city.”

However, it was noted repeatedly by Mayor and Council that things like a tree bylaw would be looked at during the review of the Official Community Plan.

by Cheryl Jahn

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