Concerned Vancouver residents have raised the alarm about a 400-year-old Douglas Fir tree cut down in Stanley Park.
Norm Oberson, a provincially-certified tree risk assessor, said he was contacted two weeks ago by a woman who spotted a worker in the tree who told her the tree was hollow and had to be felled.
“When I showed up at the site, the first thing I observed was the size of the tree being on the ground, that all the bark had been stripped off the tree,” Oberson said.
“So the tree apparently had been debarked prior to sounding, and I would presume the reason for that is that the bark is so thick you can’t actually sound the tree with the bark on the tree.”
He said Douglas Firs can have bark that is up to four inches thick.
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It is not known who cut the tree down.
Oberson said he was then hired by the Stanley Park Preservation Society to come and inspect the tree.
“When I came out to do my first assessment sounding, I visually inspected the tree and then observed that there was some deterioration on the exterior of the tree, but the rest of the tree looked safe and sound,” Oberson said.
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“And so I assessed the log and I found a bull rope in the tree, a three-quarter-inch-thick bull rope. And I looked at the felling cuts, the notch observed was a small notch cut. And the felling rope would correspond to an area that was brushed out at the trail. So when they felled it, they would wedge it and pull it at the same time to get more control on the direction of fall.”
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Oberson said the bull rope has now been removed, so someone returned to collect the rope at some point.
He said there are two other Douglas Firs in the park that are similar to the tree that was cut down. About 50 years ago, the Vancouver Park Board topped all the old-growth trees in Stanley Park, which shortened the life of the trees.
“I’m not sure why they did it,” he added.
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“Many of these trees are left standing dead. And some of them blow over in windstorms because the roots decay. And so when the roots decay, the tree becomes potentially unstable.”
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Oberson said he does not think the tree needed to be cut down.
“There’s no evidence of imminent risk, just minor deterioration on the outside of the tree,” he said. “So, there is no evidence of imminent risk with this tree.”
He thinks it could have been standing another 70 to 80 years.
“I don’t know why the tree was cut down, but from a safety perspective, I don’t see anything dangerous in this tree after performing a regular inspection and a mallet-sounding inspection, and even with a detailed inspection, there’s nothing that indicates that the tree is dangerous.”
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The Vancouver Park Board cut down the tree after a rainstorm last month. They told Global News that the bark that was falling off was a safety risk to people on the nearby trail.
Jillian MaGuire, one of the directors of the Stanley Preservation Society, which is a group of citizens concerned about the future of the park, said it is devastating to see the Douglas Fir chopped down.
She said their lawyer reached out to the City of Vancouver to inquire about the assessment of the tree but they have not yet heard back.
“I’m horrified,” MaGuire added.
“This park means so much to so many people. People come from all over the world to visit this park. People come to the city, they spend their tourist dollars all over the city. And they come here to see this world-famous semi-wild environment that has some of the last old-growth trees around in British Columbia.
“It’s certainly incredibly unique in a city to have old-growth trees like this, to have trees of this size. And for the city to be cutting them down is so disturbing.”
Oberson says this old-growth Douglas Fir, which stood about 120 feet high, had a lot of value for animals and the surrounding ecosystem.
“It’s an old-growth Douglas Fir, and it’s left standing dead,” he added.
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“There aren’t many of these trees in the park at all. This is actually very rare… That bark normally loosens and creates habitat for bats who roost underneath the bark, particularly on the Douglas Firs. That’s critical habitat for not just the bats, but other small birds, other amphibians. They use that bark and the bark has all been stripped off. So that degraded the wildlife tree before they even tested it with the mallet.”
Oberson also said that when the tree fell to the ground, it destroyed a nearby frog pond.
“The devastation to that pond, I mean, when this thing landed, it was like a large explosion. It just blew the hell out of the whole pond. And I think it’ll come back though. Eventually it’ll all come back, I think. I’m not an ecologist.”
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