PelhamToday received the following letter to the editor from Pelham Advocates for Trees and Habitat vice president Graham Pett:
I spoke on behalf of Pelham Advocates for Trees and Habitat (PATH) at a recent Town of Pelham Council meeting regarding PATH’s request that council act on Option 3 of the town’s planning department report titled; “Tree Protection Practises in the Town of Pelham”.
PATH is dismayed with council’s refusal to explore the feasibility of a private tree bylaw. To be clear, Option 3 was simply to “explore” the possibility of such a bylaw.
We were disappointed that councillors asked no questions of the two delegations speaking on this issue (PATH and a private citizen). In subsequent discussion council raised issues such as the cost to property owners should such a bylaw be enacted.
Talk about putting the “cart before the horse”, since at this moment the cost to a property owner is a complete unknown. If council wanted, there could be no to minimal cost to the property owner. All such considerations would have been part of a feasibility study.
Another councillor stated they had heard of many problems with such a bylaw in other jurisdictions. Yet, said councillor provided no study, statistics nor even anecdotal evidence to back this opinion. As far as PATH is aware, of the many municipalities across Ontario (including Niagara-on-the-Lake and Fort Erie and possibly soon the Town of Lincoln) who have enacted such a bylaw, none have been rescinded. That tells one something.
It is striking to note that in the planning department report they laid out a very strong case for protecting trees in Pelham, in that they are valuable public infrastructure, whether publicly or privately owned. Implementation of strong tree protection measures are essential to the town.
In the public works department report of last Dec., it was stated that protection, preservation and growth of the tree canopy on both public and private lands in Pelham was “vital” (stated several times in their report) for the sustainability of this community.
A focus of this council’s strategic four-year plan was for the growth of Pelham’s trees and forests. Nice words and even nicer platitudes, but as we informed council, if such words are not backed up by strong action, then that’s all they are-nice words.
In the end, despite PATH’s request that the town not undertake Option 2, as the Niagara Region’s Woodland Conservation bylaw is simply not designed for urban trees protection and basically useless when protecting trees from being clear-cut for development, this council opted for Option 2.
Is Option 2 better than nothing? Maybe. But by any reasonable measure it falls far short of the serious actions required if we are to both preserve and grow Pelham’s tree canopy.
Although Pelham has a reasonably good policy for protecting and planting trees on publicly owned lands, as the vast majority of land in Pelham is privately owned, it continues to be open season on trees. And, we have no idea how many trees continue to be lost because there is no oversight.
In the end, Pelham is behind the times. Clearly we’re not as green as some think we are.
Graham Pett, Vice President
Pelham Advocates for Trees and Habitat
Fonthill