Salt Spring Island Local Trust Committee special meeting, October 22, 2021

[0:00:00] Voice 8: go such as the life of the digital age perhaps i will keep an eye

[0:00:16] Voice 18: on my inbox in case anybody else

[0:00:18] Voice 18: is having link issues as we seem to be short most of our members of our working group i clicked on

[0:00:25] Trustee Patrick: the link that i had in the calendar and it said i couldn't join so then i had to use the link i

[0:00:31] Trustee Patrick: ahead from rob okay

[0:00:33] Voice 6: here

[0:00:35] Trustee Patrick: they come so

[0:00:36] Voice 7: we're now we

[0:00:37] Voice 6: are live we have five attendees um to our

[0:00:48] Voice 1: catherine can't get on video or mic i

[0:00:53] Voice 6: have you have to go turn your volume off over there

[0:00:57] Voice 6: the meal p and catherine luton are in attendees do they need promoting i forget our guest list

[0:01:11] Voice 6: They

[0:01:12] Voice 18: do not. They are not members of the working group.

[0:01:17] Voice 6: Chair Leckham, we are now recording and live streaming and I'll let you have it.

[0:01:24] Trustee Luckham: Okay, thank you. I'm prepared to assume at this point that we have everybody attending

[0:01:30] Trustee Luckham: as a participant that we're expecting to attend as participants. Is that correct? Does anybody

[0:01:36] Trustee Luckham: see anybody missing? No. Okay.

[0:01:41] Voice 18: There are a few members of the working

[0:01:43] Voice 18: group missing but my hope is that they will uh filter in over time and i do see an email message

[0:01:48] Voice 18: here from one of the working group members so let me attend to that and i'll see if i can

[0:01:52] Voice 18: get her in all

[0:01:53] Trustee Luckham: right then so if there's no concerns then i'll just look towards the trustees

[0:01:58] Trustee Luckham: and tara and brienne is tiny as uh leads here um that we're ready to proceed yeah okay so good

[0:02:08] Trustee Luckham: Good morning, everyone.

[0:02:10] Trustee Luckham: Thank you for joining us for this special meeting.

[0:02:14] Trustee Luckham: My name is Peter Lockham.

[0:02:15] Trustee Luckham: I'm the chair of the Salt Spring Island Local Trust Committee,

[0:02:19] Trustee Luckham: also the chair of Islands Trust Council.

[0:02:22] Trustee Luckham: I am elected on Thetis Island, which

[0:02:25] Trustee Luckham: is in the territory of the Laioxin and the Penelakut

[0:02:28] Trustee Luckham: peoples.

[0:02:28] Trustee Luckham: And I am so privileged and honored

[0:02:32] Trustee Luckham: to be able to call that my home.

[0:02:35] Trustee Luckham: That's where I live, on Thetis Island.

[0:02:37] Trustee Luckham: And that's my background there.

[0:02:38] Trustee Luckham: is actually a drone shot looking out on what I call the center of the playground.

[0:02:43] Trustee Luckham: But nonetheless today I find myself joining this meeting in Cowerton territory and I just wanted to

[0:02:51] Trustee Luckham: note as is my want these days to really acknowledge the territorial history and the

[0:02:59] Trustee Luckham: rich culture that exists in this amazing place that I call and we call home. So I'm in Cowerton

[0:03:06] Trustee Luckham: territory today in Duncan, and not everybody is aware that Cowichan tribe is made up of seven

[0:03:13] Trustee Luckham: traditional villages, the Kwamitsin, the, come on, it's interesting, I've realized that I'm

[0:03:22] Trustee Luckham: forgetting my, the little Hulkaminum that I do know, but Kwamichin, Hawitsin, Samana, Lamlamalats,

[0:03:31] Trustee Luckham: Hinapsum and Chipalis, as well as the Komatsun original villages. It's one of the, it's the

[0:03:39] Trustee Luckham: single largest nation in British Columbia and I had the great privilege of working with that

[0:03:45] Trustee Luckham: organization for a number of years and it's something that I will carry with me all my life

[0:03:50] Trustee Luckham: and I'm grateful to have had that opportunity. So let us begin, we'll just start,

[0:03:57] Trustee Luckham: that I do have an agenda.

[0:03:59] Trustee Luckham: I'll go around and just allow some introductions.

[0:04:02] Trustee Luckham: But we have an agenda with us today

[0:04:05] Trustee Luckham: with only three items for this special meeting

[0:04:08] Trustee Luckham: around the Coastal Douglas fir zone

[0:04:11] Trustee Luckham: on Salt Spring Island at work.

[0:04:13] Trustee Luckham: And I'll just ask the or staff

[0:04:17] Trustee Luckham: if there's anything else to add to the agenda today,

[0:04:19] Trustee Luckham: but I'm assuming this is what we're doing here today.

[0:04:22] Trustee Luckham: Not seeing any hands jump up.

[0:04:25] Trustee Luckham: Oh, Jason Yeomans, go ahead.

[0:04:27] Trustee Luckham: Chair

[0:04:27] Voice 18: Luckom, if I may just have a few minutes to give a brief introduction and overview of the what and the why of the working group before we dive into Tara's presentation. I think that would be valuable. Thank you.

[0:04:38] Trustee Luckham: Okay, absolutely. So that's great. And so then I'm going to adopt the agenda as presented. And let us begin with introductions. I'm just going to go around the room according to my screen layout, which you all know is different from where you are and how you log in.

[0:04:56] Trustee Luckham: and

[0:04:56] Voice 12: start with Trustee Grove.

[0:04:59] Voice 12: Good morning.

[0:05:02] Voice 12: Yeah, Tara Martin.

[0:05:04] Voice 9: Good morning.

[0:05:07] Voice 12: Bryony, Jason Yeomans, Planner,

[0:05:12] Voice 12: Trustee Patrick,

[0:05:15] Trustee Luckham: Riley Finn.

[0:05:17] Voice 12: Good morning.

[0:05:19] Trustee Luckham: William Shoba.

[0:05:20] Trustee Luckham: Good morning.

[0:05:22] Trustee Luckham: Ruth Waldick.

[0:05:23] Trustee Luckham: Hello.

[0:05:25] Trustee Luckham: Catherine Martel, Ounce Trust staff also.

[0:05:27] Trustee Luckham: also. Mitchell Sharon. Good morning. Susan Hannon. Morning. Of course, Sarah Sugar, our

[0:05:37] Trustee Luckham: minute taker. Thank you for joining us, Sarah. And also Stefan Cermak, our regional planning

[0:05:44] Trustee Luckham: manager. Unless I've missed somebody, we shall continue on. So let us indeed turn over opening

[0:05:56] Trustee Luckham: opening uh introduction to uh planner yeomans thank you for organizing this uh thank you chair

[0:06:04] Voice 18: lockham I'm pleased to have the opportunity to um bring this working group to you to the local trust

[0:06:09] Voice 18: committee um you'll recall that the LTC had previously requested the opportunity to meet

[0:06:13] Voice 18: with this group as I think they have a lot of valuable information to share with you as you

[0:06:18] Voice 18: determine what your next steps might be in advancing your coastal Douglas for protection

[0:06:22] Voice 18: I'll just remind the Local Trust Committee sort of the genesis of this group, and it derives from the project charter that the Local Trust Committee adopted in July of 2020 to guide its coastal Douglas fir and zone and associated ecosystems protection project.

[0:06:45] Voice 18: A project that, you know, the way I remember it, and you may remember it differently than I do, was sort of born of two things.

[0:06:52] Voice 18: One was community concern about some clear cuts that were occurring on Salt Spring Island at that time.

[0:07:00] Voice 18: I remember a number of community meetings where members of the public came and were looking to the local trust committee to investigate what steps it could take to better protect some of the island's forests.

[0:07:12] Voice 18: forests and around the same time of course the Islands Trust was developing its strategic plan

[0:07:17] Voice 18: for this term and one of the items that rose to the to the top of that strategic plan I think

[0:07:23] Voice 18: was the protection of coastal Douglas fir ecosystems. In 2018 the LTC or sorry the

[0:07:29] Voice 18: Islands Trust had developed a CDF ecosystem protection toolkit for local trust committees

[0:07:35] Voice 18: to consider implementing and in that which I think you should be able to see on the screen now

[0:07:41] Voice 18: it laid out four objectives for coastal douglas for his own and associated ecosystem protection

[0:07:48] Voice 18: those were to maintain contiguous forest cover to protect and restore functioning ecosystems

[0:07:53] Voice 18: to protect watershed ecology and to honor coast salish cultural heritage as staff began to help

[0:08:02] Voice 18: the ltc develop its own local project here on salt spring we really took those objectives from

[0:08:08] Voice 18: from the greater trust toolkit

[0:08:10] Voice 18: and put them into the local project charter here

[0:08:14] Voice 18: with one additional objective,

[0:08:17] Voice 18: which is to minimize wildfire risk, right?

[0:08:19] Voice 18: Recognizing that our forests are under strain these days

[0:08:23] Voice 18: in the changing climate.

[0:08:26] Voice 18: As staff began to think about

[0:08:29] Voice 18: how to achieve these objectives,

[0:08:32] Voice 18: the one at the top of the list there

[0:08:33] Voice 18: is maintain contiguous forest cover.

[0:08:36] Voice 18: In the service of this,

[0:08:37] Voice 18: the Islands Trust had commissioned some contiguous forest cover mapping last year which we took to be

[0:08:43] Voice 18: a very strong foundation on which to begin to to build this project and identify areas on Salt

[0:08:48] Voice 18: Spring Island geographic areas toward which the local trust committee might want to turn its

[0:08:53] Voice 18: attention or its focus as it sought to better protect the forests but we began to hear some

[0:08:58] Voice 18: murmurings that perhaps this contiguous forest mapping that the Islands Trust had commissioned

[0:09:04] Voice 18: wasn't an entirely complete picture, and there might be a way to build out sort of a more robust

[0:09:10] Voice 18: understanding of the island's forest ecosystems in the service of achieving these project

[0:09:15] Voice 18: objectives. I am not an ecologist or a biologist, so I, you know, quickly recognized the limitations

[0:09:23] Voice 18: of my own skill set, and so it seemed wise then to bring together some experts to help advise

[0:09:30] Voice 18: eyes on how we could build on the trust's existing contiguous forest mapping, or at least incorporate

[0:09:37] Voice 18: that contiguous forest mapping in amongst other layers of data information that we might have on

[0:09:42] Voice 18: hand. And so we put the call out to folks that sort of live on the island here that have specific

[0:09:49] Voice 18: scientific credentials that might be of interest to us, folks with deep involvement in environmental

[0:09:55] Voice 18: environmental conservation and ecology. And through that, we developed the CDF Science

[0:10:00] Voice 18: Working Group, members of which are here today. And I'm looking at Mitchell Sharon here on the

[0:10:06] Voice 18: screen right now. And I'll just mention that by adding wildfire risk mitigation to the list of

[0:10:11] Voice 18: objectives, it seemed the proven thing to bring somebody on board who has a deep understanding

[0:10:16] Voice 18: of wildfire risk as it occurs here on Salt Spring Island. And so we're grateful to Mitchell for

[0:10:22] Voice 18: taking the time to join the group as well. And so we've got this great group of scientists to

[0:10:28] Voice 18: help advise the local trust committee and help guide me as I advise the local trust committee

[0:10:32] Voice 18: on how to move this project forward. And so we've now had four meetings. And the first meeting was

[0:10:38] Voice 18: really just to review what data was at hand, either within the island's trust data sets or

[0:10:45] Voice 18: within available data sets through the provincial government, or perhaps that are in more private

[0:10:50] Voice 18: hands. And one of our working group members is Tara Martin, Dr. Tara Martin, who's here today.

[0:10:57] Voice 18: And we're very grateful to her for volunteering the services of her conservation decision lab

[0:11:03] Voice 18: out of UBC to help us aggregate all the data that we could put together and begin layering it

[0:11:10] Voice 18: to come to that more nuanced understanding of the island's forests and where the LTC might

[0:11:18] Voice 18: might wish to focus some of its protection or conservation or indeed educational efforts,

[0:11:24] Voice 18: however the LTC chooses to advance this project. I'm probably sort of butchering

[0:11:31] Voice 18: that understanding of what it is that Tara has done for us, but I'm going to turn it over to

[0:11:36] Voice 18: her momentarily and she can have the opportunity to explain it with greater accuracy and detail

[0:11:41] Voice 18: than I. So the first meeting, essentially, we looked at what data was available, determined

[0:11:47] Voice 18: that probably through all of the available data sets at our fingertips, we did have enough data

[0:11:52] Voice 18: to begin to move forward on this project. Tara volunteered to put that all together through her

[0:11:56] Voice 18: lab. And then the next three meetings were by and large just about refining the decision support

[0:12:02] Voice 18: tool that Tara's lab helped develop for the LTC and for this working group, just refining it to

[0:12:10] Voice 18: make sure that all of the details were as correct as we can make them for the purpose that this tool

[0:12:19] Voice 18: was developed and so through the work of Tara's lab through the work of this working group

[0:12:25] Voice 18: we now have a decision support tool to help staff and to help the local trust committee identify

[0:12:33] Voice 18: areas of Salt Spring Island towards which it may want to turn its regulatory or policy or

[0:12:39] Voice 18: educational powers in the service of coastal Douglas fir zone and

[0:12:43] Voice 8: associated ecosystem

[0:12:44] Voice 8: protection. Thank you.

[0:12:52] Trustee Luckham: Thank you, Jason. So, indeed, I'm guessing this takes us to 3.2 on

[0:12:57] Trustee Luckham: the agenda, and Dr. Martin, I'll turn it over to you. Great.

[0:13:05] Voice 9: Now, if I can just share my screen,

[0:13:07] Voice 9: let me just, if you stop sharing, Jason, then I can hop on.

[0:13:16] Voice 12: And while you're doing that,

[0:13:17] Trustee Luckham: I think I'll acknowledge that Sally John has joined us

[0:13:20] Trustee Luckham: on the session.

[0:13:21] Trustee Luckham: Good morning, Sally.

[0:13:22] Trustee Luckham: And I think also I saw Susan Hannon

[0:13:25] Trustee Luckham: who was not with us earlier.

[0:13:27] Trustee Luckham: So thank you, Susan, for joining us.

[0:13:31] Voice 13: No, I'm not sure.

[0:13:32] Voice 13: What are you, are you seeing my screen yet?

[0:13:34] Voice 13: Yes.

[0:13:35] Voice 13: Are you seeing the presentation?

[0:13:38] Voice 12: Coastal Douglas fir.

[0:13:39] Voice 13: Great.

[0:13:39] Voice 12: I've

[0:13:40] Voice 13: seen your talking points.

[0:13:41] Voice 13: Oh, you are?

[0:13:41] Voice 13: Okay, that's what I was,

[0:13:43] Voice 13: that's what I thought might be going on here.

[0:13:45] Voice 13: One

[0:13:48] Voice 9: moment, let me just switch. Great.

[0:13:56] Voice 13: Okay. Thank you very much for inviting me to participate

[0:14:01] Voice 13: in this working group and to share the skills and knowledge of my team to help provide some

[0:14:10] Voice 13: scientific guidance on this really challenging but exciting and important issue. And I'd first

[0:14:18] Voice 13: just like to acknowledge that I'm here on Salt Spring Island today. I was born on the island,

[0:14:23] Voice 13: I've spent a lot of my life on this island and I've seen a lot of change on the island over the

[0:14:30] Voice 13: past 50 years. I want to acknowledge my colleague and research assistant Riley Finn who's really

[0:14:40] Voice 13: done the heavy lifting on this work and the CDF working group whose guidance and incredible

[0:14:49] Voice 13: expertise and knowledge of the system has helped us to refine the tool itself and I think make it

[0:14:57] Voice 13: a much more robust and useful tool for guiding decisions in the future. So the Coastal Douglas

[0:15:06] Voice 13: Douglas fir bioclimatic zone is shown here in this map in orange. It's really this very small, unique bioclimatic zone in the province.

[0:15:19] Voice 13: It's the most impacted bioclimatic zone, and it's probably no surprise why it's most impacted, because it falls exactly where most of us live.

[0:15:29] Voice 13: It's also the least represented ecosystem within our protected area networks with less than 4% of it actually protected.

[0:15:38] Voice 13: And it has less than 1% of our old forests or old growth left. So these are trees over 250 years old.

[0:15:47] Voice 13: So 99% of those big trees have been cleared at least once, sometimes twice, sometimes three times.

[0:16:00] Voice 13: It's also home to more endangered species than any other bioclimatic zone.

[0:16:05] Voice 13: And it has the fourth most endangered species of any ecosystem across Canada.

[0:16:11] Voice 13: So we live in this incredibly rich region in terms of its biodiversity, but also one of the most intensely inhabited regions in Canada.

[0:16:23] Voice 13: So why prioritize the Coastal Douglas Fir region?

[0:16:28] Voice 13: You know, why bother doing this?

[0:16:31] Voice 13: I think there's some key reasons, and one is around climate stabilization and climate mitigation.

[0:16:37] Voice 13: We have huge amounts of evidence that healthy, intact forests help regulate the climate, and we need this now more than ever.

[0:16:51] Voice 13: A lot of my work with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature Climate Change Task Force is around looking at these nature-based solutions for climate mitigation.

[0:17:02] Voice 13: And protection and restoration of forest ecosystems is one of the most cost-effective things we can do for climate stabilization.

[0:17:12] Voice 13: We're also really concerned about water protection, protecting water recharge.

[0:17:17] Voice 13: As our climate becomes warmer, and we have more and more people living in this region drawing on those water resources, we really need to plan for a future where we're protecting these areas of high water recharge.

[0:17:34] Voice 13: Wildfire risk reduction is a key concern of all residents that live in this region.

[0:17:40] Voice 13: and we also know that intact forests functioning healthy forests are more resilient to fire than

[0:17:49] Voice 13: forests that are highly fragmented and forests that have lost a lot of their biodiversity and

[0:17:55] Voice 13: a lot of their understory so this is another key reason why we need to think about how we manage

[0:18:01] Voice 13: our forests and how our forests can help us actually protect us from wildfire in the future

[0:18:10] Voice 13: biodiversity conservation as i said this region is amongst the top four endangered ecosystems

[0:18:16] Voice 13: across all of canada and we also need to think about the sustainable forestry within the island

[0:18:24] Voice 13: if we don't plan for the the management of these forests then we won't have any big old trees

[0:18:31] Voice 13: for you know producing high value products in the future we won't have be able to to have

[0:18:38] Voice 13: to support local milling and local jobs so this is also about sustainable forestry

[0:18:44] Voice 13: and finally it's it's about justice and equity for future generations in my lifetime in 50 years

[0:18:51] Voice 13: I've seen this island change markedly and if it kept at that pace then there's no chance that

[0:18:57] Voice 13: you know our grandchildren will be able to enjoy the same bounty of nature that that we have

[0:19:08] Voice 9: So

[0:19:08] Voice 13: the island's under intense development pressure particularly in the last sort of five to ten years

[0:19:16] Voice 13: and we don't currently have any guidelines for ecosystem protection and management.

[0:19:22] Voice 13: So how do we go about this? How do we identify high value coastal Douglas fir? So our process

[0:19:29] Voice 13: here was first to bring together all of the available data that we have. So these are spatial

[0:19:36] Voice 13: data, things like water recharge potential, terrestrial ecosystem and sensitive ecosystem

[0:19:43] Voice 13: mapping, the contiguity mapping that Jason mentioned earlier, information around our

[0:19:49] Voice 13: watersheds, and information on where are these big old trees, where are the big giants that

[0:19:58] Voice 13: are still left in these ecosystems, where is that 1%?

[0:20:02] Voice 13: We then normalized many of these layers across watersheds because we're looking to find equitable

[0:20:09] Voice 13: solutions across the watersheds on Salt Spring Island. We're also wanting to make sure that

[0:20:14] Voice 13: we're protecting our water recharge areas within each watershed. We then apply spatial optimization,

[0:20:23] Voice 13: which allows us to build different scenarios, set different targets for these spatial features,

[0:20:32] Voice 13: that we recognize as important. And then we can identify areas that meet those targets across a

[0:20:39] Voice 13: range of different scenarios. And then finally, we ground truth results. So we spend time doing

[0:20:45] Voice 13: surveys to make sure that the areas that are identified as priorities are indeed

[0:20:52] Voice 13: priorities on the ground. And we run, you know, all of this has been kind of run through this

[0:21:00] Voice 13: expert working panel. So let's talk about the data layers that we use for this project.

[0:21:08] Voice 13: One of the core layers is the terrestrial ecosystem and sensitive ecosystem mapping.

[0:21:13] Voice 13: This is a provincial product that was first published in 2011. And it's been, it's under

[0:21:20] Voice 13: constant renewal and update. And so that really provides kind of the core base of where are the

[0:21:28] Voice 13: the key ecosystems across the island. We then had a layer which was a composite layer of the

[0:21:39] Voice 13: various different types of conservation and protected areas across the island. These include

[0:21:45] Voice 13: non-government organizations like the Salt Spring Island Conservancy. It includes parks,

[0:21:51] Voice 13: parks, ecological reserves, and protected areas. It includes First Nation reserves and

[0:21:59] Voice 13: it also includes the Coastal Douglas Fir land use orders. And we converted those back into

[0:22:08] Voice 13: the, so the image on the left are the boundaries based on the cadastre. The image on the right

[0:22:17] Voice 13: is those converted into the TEM-SEM vegetation community layer.

[0:22:27] Voice 13: We then used a layer of groundwater recharge potential developed by the trust,

[0:22:34] Voice 13: developed by William and his team.

[0:22:36] Voice 13: And this was also converted.

[0:22:40] Voice 13: So this is the raw recharge values that you're seeing here.

[0:22:44] Voice 13: And then we converted that into a normalized recharge value such that the highest value recharge within a catchment becomes a priority.

[0:22:57] Voice 13: By doing this, we have an equitable selection of recharge areas across each catchment rather than just focusing, for example, on the southern half of the island.

[0:23:09] Voice 13: We have the data on ecosystem quality and the stage, the seral stage, and that was from this

[0:23:19] Voice 13: contiguity mapping that the trust commissioned last year. And we have a layer that shows where

[0:23:28] Voice 13: are all the big old trees on Salt Spring. And so this is work that my team has developed using

[0:23:34] Voice 13: LIDAR data. We can identify trees over different heights across the island, and this is just

[0:23:39] Voice 13: showing all the trees over 50 meters. And we can see that there's over 8,000 trees over 50 meters.

[0:23:48] Voice 13: If when we look at count how many trees over 70 meters, there's only around 300 trees left. Those

[0:23:55] Voice 13: are the big old giants. So these islands have changed a lot. We then apply a spatial optimization.

[0:24:05] Voice 13: This is what we call a minimum set problem. We're trying to find the minimum set of parcels that are going to meet our targets for the minimum cost.

[0:24:17] Voice 13: So we want to set this constraint of cost so that we are being conservative in what we're selecting, because, of course, our land is used for many other purposes.

[0:24:31] Voice 13: And we want to assess how we can meet certain targets for the least cost to society, but also just in terms of the least spatial area.

[0:24:48] Voice 13: So here's an example of a particular scenario in Target.

[0:24:55] Voice 13: In this scenario, we're saying we want to protect 50% of each ecosystem type.

[0:25:04] Voice 13: We want to have protection across half of the watershed with half of each basin watershed.

[0:25:12] Voice 13: watershed. And we want in the results, we want to include 70% of all trees over 50 meters tall

[0:25:21] Voice 13: and 90% of all trees over 60 meters tall. And we want the outputs to maximize the quality

[0:25:31] Voice 13: and the stage of the remaining forests. And we also want the outputs to complement what has

[0:25:40] Voice 13: already being protected. So we're looking to meet this target based on what has already been

[0:25:47] Voice 13: protected in the system. So this is just an example of an output. This is the southwest

[0:25:59] Voice 13: corner of Salt Spring Island looking across to Sampson Narrows and Vancouver Island.

[0:26:04] Voice 13: And we get maps like this. The pink area is areas that have already sit within the

[0:26:12] Voice 13: protected area estate on Salt Spring. And then we can get these color ramps, which show us the

[0:26:19] Voice 13: amount of times a particular unit of land is selected as a priority. So if you were to run

[0:26:31] Voice 13: this 100 times, the areas in the deep green are selected between 86 and 100 times in each of the

[0:26:40] Voice 13: solutions, whereas the areas down in the lightest color are selected between zero and 14% of the

[0:26:47] Voice 13: time. And so this gives us a way of starting to identify where are these parcels of land which

[0:26:53] Voice 13: meet all of these specific targets under a given scenario.

[0:27:01] Voice 9: So how can we

[0:27:03] Voice 13: use this tool? As Jason

[0:27:04] Voice 13: opened with, this is really a decision support tool. This does not tell us what to do and where

[0:27:11] Voice 13: to do it. This is a tool that can be used to guide decision-making based on our values, based on

[0:27:18] Voice 13: the targets, based on the scenarios that we care about. It can be used to help identify

[0:27:25] Voice 13: the most important parcels for protecting water resources and ensuring sustainable supply in the

[0:27:32] Voice 13: future. It can be used to reduce our risk of catastrophic fire under a warming climate.

[0:27:38] Voice 13: it. It can be used to conserve our unique biodiversity at risk of extinction. It can

[0:27:45] Voice 13: be used to contribute to find those areas that are going to contribute most to carbon sequestration

[0:27:54] Voice 13: and help us work as a community towards net zero emissions. And ultimately, it can show the health

[0:28:01] Voice 13: and well-being of future generations so that, you know, our grandchildren and their grandchildren

[0:28:06] Voice 13: children can enjoy this incredible, incredibly unique and special place in which we have the

[0:28:14] Voice 13: privilege to live. I'll leave

[0:28:20] Voice 9: it there and open it up to questions. Thank you.

[0:28:26] Voice 12: Okay, thank you very much, Tara.

[0:28:32] Trustee Luckham: Clearly, this just scrapes the surface of the work that you've

[0:28:35] Trustee Luckham: done. And so indeed, let's open up the floor to questions and or remarks as the next item. So

[0:28:45] Trustee Luckham: the best way for me to manage that through this whole Zoom world is a show of digital hands.

[0:28:53] Trustee Luckham: And we'll just go through according to the order. So I see Trustee Grove.

[0:29:00] Trustee Grove: Thank you, Sarah. And thank you all on this committee for all the great work you've been

[0:29:05] Trustee Grove: been doing. It's kind of astounding how much you have done. And it also astounds me how little I

[0:29:13] Trustee Grove: know and how much we need people like you to help us. Just a couple of specific questions and then

[0:29:20] Trustee Grove: a more general one. You talk about old forest. It's my understanding that all of Salt Spring

[0:29:26] Trustee Grove: has been logged and we have very little, if any, first growth on the island. That's the question.

[0:29:33] Voice 13: That's correct. I mean, most of our forests have been logged, but there are some big old trees left.

[0:29:40] Voice 13: You know, we know that there are around 313 trees that are over 70 meters.

[0:29:45] Voice 13: So those are big old giants. But we have around 650 trees over 60 meters and then those 8000 trees over 50 meters.

[0:29:55] Voice 13: Not some of those 8000 are also.

[0:30:00] Voice 13: old growth. So we have, we have a combination of, of a few big old giants. And then we have some

[0:30:10] Voice 13: what we call mature second growth, you know, trees that were cleared, you know, around the

[0:30:15] Voice 13: turn of the century, which are now showing the characteristics of mature starting mature forests.

[0:30:24] Voice 13: However, you know, you're right, the majority of our forests are second growth and many are third growth, but that certainly doesn't take away the value of those forests and the need to have protection across these different seral stages.

[0:30:42] Voice 13: stages.

[0:30:43] Trustee Grove: Okay, thank you. One of your slides, and unfortunately they weren't numbered, but you said

[0:30:51] Trustee Grove: basically, how can we have the maximum effect for the minimum cost? What do you mean by minimum cost?

[0:31:01] Voice 13: So, costs can be implemented in these analyses in many different ways. They can be in an actual

[0:31:08] Voice 13: economic costs. So the, you know, the opportunity cost of land, that can be the cost of land

[0:31:14] Voice 13: purchase, that can be the cost of land management. But in this analysis, what we wanted to do,

[0:31:20] Voice 13: we use costs as the inverse values of the quality and the stage and the groundwater

[0:31:28] Voice 13: recharge potential. So in other words, we're penalizing sites with poor recharge potential

[0:31:35] Voice 13: potential with a higher cost value. So that's a way of ensuring that in our optimization we're

[0:31:44] Voice 13: selecting those sites that are of the highest quality, are of the oldest stage, and have the

[0:31:51] Voice 13: greatest recharge.

[0:31:54] Trustee Grove: Thank you. Just two more questions. So which of the charts that you

[0:32:01] Trustee Grove: showed us, identifies the areas that you believe must be protected.

[0:32:07] Voice 13: So I've only shown you a snippet of a small area, and I'll bring that back. I haven't

[0:32:14] Voice 13: shown the entire map, but those maps will be available for you to view. So we have different,

[0:32:21] Voice 13: so for example, in the map that's on the screen right now, this is kind of Musgrave, we're

[0:32:30] Voice 13: looking at, this is the southwest corner of Salt Spring. These areas in dark green are the highest

[0:32:38] Voice 13: priority, and the lighter areas are lower priority. So the darker the color, the higher priority.

[0:32:45] Trustee Grove: Thank you. And that's going to be a key map for LTC. My last question, and probably the most

[0:32:52] Trustee Grove: important, is what do you think we should do with all this information? And what should the LTC do?

[0:32:58] Trustee Grove: what happens next? Thanks.

[0:33:02] Voice 13: I think now would be a great time to reconvene with the

[0:33:06] Voice 13: expert working group. They've done a lot of work. We've done a lot of work, you know,

[0:33:13] Voice 13: identifying some of the tools and incentives that could be used to help protect and best manage

[0:33:21] Voice 13: these high value parcels.

[0:33:26] Trustee Luckham: Okay. Now I see Trustee Patrick, but I also heard that Jason Yeoman maybe

[0:33:30] Trustee Luckham: had something to contribute to in the way of an answer to Trustee Grove's question. Do you want

[0:33:35] Trustee Luckham: to pick that up, Jason, or shall I go to Trustee Patrick?

[0:33:38] Voice 18: No, please go to Trustee Patrick. Thanks.

[0:33:40] Trustee Luckham: All right, Trustee Patrick.

[0:33:42] Trustee Patrick: No, I'm looking forward to this next part of the conversation,

[0:33:45] Trustee Patrick: but my question relates to the data. One of my frustrations with data projects is we do them,

[0:33:55] Trustee Patrick: and then they become static, and then they become out of date. What could we do to make sure this

[0:34:00] Trustee Patrick: this doesn't happen. Is this something that we need to formalize a relationship with the

[0:34:06] Trustee Patrick: conservation lab or something into the future that we make sure we're keeping our data sets

[0:34:11] Trustee Patrick: current, active, up-to-date, adaptive to what we're learning?

[0:34:16] Voice 13: Yeah, I think that's a great,

[0:34:18] Voice 13: great, great point, Laura. And I think that there's two things. We have talked about a

[0:34:24] Voice 13: memorandum understanding with my team, and that's something that we would really be happy to engage

[0:34:31] Voice 13: age in so that we could continue to update the data layers as new ones become available

[0:34:37] Voice 13: but that is the really that's that is the value of a decision support tool like this is as updates

[0:34:45] Voice 13: are made to the terrestrial ecosystem mapping or we get new information about the quality

[0:34:52] Voice 13: of our forests we bring in that spatial layer and we rerun the analysis and and so that's a

[0:34:59] Voice 13: a it's very simple to do now that we have this um platform set up okay

[0:35:08] Trustee Luckham: thank you so um before we go

[0:35:10] Trustee Luckham: into a round table kind of a general discussion um i'll just field a couple of questions um and

[0:35:17] Trustee Luckham: just you know certainly note that as a as a living on a different island not within the salt spring

[0:35:24] Trustee Luckham: coastal douglas for but certainly coastal douglas for more broadly throughout the trust area and

[0:35:29] Trustee Luckham: And just referring to my own home on Fetus Island, which, you know, I'm amazingly privileged to live in a Gary oak ecosystem, which of course has coastal Douglas fir as a component of it or, you know, not sure totally on how that relationship it is.

[0:35:49] Trustee Luckham: But I know that on my own property, I have what foresters refer to as dwarf trees, that because of the circumstances of the topology, sandstone rock, very thin layers of nutrients, and the like, of which the Gary Oak ecosystem is a major part of, how are we capturing, is that a very small percentage of the coast of Douglas fir that we need to be concerned about?

[0:36:18] Trustee Luckham: but how are we capturing those trees that are indeed significant old-growth trees

[0:36:23] Trustee Luckham: that are not in that 50-meter category?

[0:36:26] Trustee Luckham: Because I imagine that throughout the Gulf Islands, that exists.

[0:36:32] Voice 13: Yeah, thanks, Chair Luckman, for bringing up that point.

[0:36:36] Voice 13: So the Coastal Douglas fir bioclimatic zone includes Gary Oak ecosystems.

[0:36:41] Voice 13: And so within this mapping, when I say Coastal Douglas fir ecosystem,

[0:36:46] Voice 13: ecosystem, it's also including that Gary oak. So this prioritization includes those high value

[0:36:55] Voice 13: Gary oak ecosystems as well. You're right, in terms of the big tree, that particular layer,

[0:37:02] Voice 13: that big tree data, it's not capturing Gary oaks, of course, it's not capturing those meadow

[0:37:06] Voice 13: ecosystems. It's really just trying to hone in on where are those, the big old giant firs and cedar

[0:37:13] Voice 13: and in Grandfurs left across the island.

[0:37:18] Voice 13: But the other layers in terms of the contiguity

[0:37:22] Voice 13: and the sensitive ecosystem mapping

[0:37:25] Voice 13: and the terrestrial ecosystem mapping are capturing

[0:37:27] Voice 13: and the water recharge are capturing

[0:37:29] Voice 13: those Gary Oak ecosystems.

[0:37:33] Trustee Luckham: Okay, thank you for that answer.

[0:37:35] Trustee Luckham: That's terrific.

[0:37:36] Trustee Luckham: So I'm not seeing any other hands up with any questions.

[0:37:39] Trustee Luckham: And so how about do we open this up to discussion

[0:37:43] Trustee Luckham: discussion because we have a significant number of other amount of expertise on with us this

[0:37:48] Trustee Luckham: morning. I'm particularly interested in the wildfire aspects of this. And not that I want to

[0:37:56] Trustee Luckham: lead guide the discussion. But how would you like to pick this up? I'm going to look to you.

[0:38:08] Voice 9: That

[0:38:09] Voice 13: was sorry, was that chair Luckin? Was that to

[0:38:13] Trustee Luckham: me? That was Yes. I'm just thinking about how

[0:38:16] Trustee Luckham: to include the other folks the expertise that we have in the room here today and to provide

[0:38:20] Trustee Luckham: some perspectives from them to help continue to inform the trustees with what we've learned here

[0:38:29] Trustee Luckham: and maybe I'll just suggest that perhaps starting off with Mitchell Sharon who you brought in as

[0:38:35] Trustee Luckham: our as wildfire mitigation and I might have the language wrong but also note that William

[0:38:42] Trustee Luckham: our freshwater specialists is here with us as well.

[0:38:45] Trustee Luckham: And that how they reflect

[0:38:48] Trustee Luckham: on this coastal Douglas for protection.

[0:38:50] Trustee Luckham: And so I'm looking to you to lead that.

[0:38:54] Trustee Luckham: Great, great.

[0:38:55] Voice 13: Well, I think we have this incredible working group.

[0:38:59] Voice 13: We're so blessed in the Island

[0:39:01] Voice 13: to have this much expertise on one Island.

[0:39:04] Voice 13: So how about we, I just like to open it up then

[0:39:07] Voice 13: to the expert group.

[0:39:09] Voice 13: And so, Mitchell, do you want to start off and just provide some feedback?

[0:39:19] Voice 3: Certainly. I find this work really informative and quite useful.

[0:39:25] Voice 3: I'm learning as much as I'm contributing because the discipline I come from has almost an opposite perspective than the one that Dr. Martin's been proposing.

[0:39:35] Voice 3: But we come from a different understanding.

[0:39:40] Voice 3: Like the research that guides what Dr. Martin's been doing is about looking at how forests can be best protected.

[0:39:49] Voice 3: And I come from a discipline that's looking at how to protect structures.

[0:39:53] Voice 3: And so intuitively, I understand exactly what this is pushing towards of helping to have healthy forests will help to protect our communities.

[0:40:05] Voice 3: But it's interesting that when you're looking at protecting individual structures, we're looking at almost exactly the opposite strategies.

[0:40:13] Voice 3: And I just actually just sent a note to Dr. Martin.

[0:40:16] Voice 3: I'm hoping to get more research to guide my practice, because when we're discussing the immediate zone around a building, we're looking for some of the opposite values.

[0:40:31] Voice 3: values um uh fragmentation is is is uh good in my world um so is our reduction in understory so is

[0:40:39] Voice 3: um a break in continuity these things can create fire breaks but i recognize at the same time

[0:40:46] Voice 3: that i can protect individual structures that way the the forest at large is more at risk of fire so

[0:40:54] Voice 3: So there's these, it's a new, as Dr. Martin said, it's a nuanced approach.

[0:40:59] Voice 3: And in different particular locations, different strategies are useful.

[0:41:05] Voice 3: So it's a really interesting study to look at how different strategies can be implemented in different locations.

[0:41:13] Voice 3: I hope I've reflected that clearly.

[0:41:17] Voice 3: As I said, it's, there's a lot to learn.

[0:41:20] Voice 3: And I think there's a lot of different strategies to be employed.

[0:41:23] Voice 3: And I think when we're looking at the macro scale, protecting our forests, helping them to be healthy is going to ultimately reduce the wildfire risk to the community at large.

[0:41:36] Voice 3: But then on the micro scale of trying to protect individual structures or clusters of structures, we need to have that flip side of the ability to create protection zones around individual structures.

[0:41:52] Voice 3: So there's this interplay back and forth between the macro scale and the micro scale. Anyway, I'll turn it off to you or back to others.

[0:42:03] Voice 13: And I'd love to just follow up on Mitchell's comments, which are really insightful.

[0:42:10] Voice 13: One of the things that we lack in terms of understanding fire knowledge in the system is a lot of the fire smart information is coming from systems from the interior.

[0:42:24] Voice 13: We really don't have much knowledge from these coastal systems at all.

[0:42:28] Voice 13: And my colleague, Laurie Daniels, who's really one of the kind of foremost experts in fire ecology at the university in Canada, but she's based in my department.

[0:42:40] Voice 13: And we've talked a lot about this and one of the things that we are testing right now is whether that loss of understory increases fire risk or decreases fire risk and what we think is actually going on in the coastal Douglas fir ecosystems is that a healthy understory

[0:43:00] Voice 13: as actually would slow down fire and in our in in these systems the biggest uh uh reason for loss

[0:43:10] Voice 13: of understory that is our biggest threat to loss of understory is hyper abundant deer populations

[0:43:16] Voice 13: and so it's another piece of the puzzle in terms of um protecting our forests just just having

[0:43:24] Voice 13: tree clearing guidelines is really not enough we need to also think about how we're managing some

[0:43:30] Voice 13: of these other threats like hyper dear hyper abundance can

[0:43:36] Voice 3: i just put in one more um one more

[0:43:39] Voice 3: point to kind of chime in and and support what dr martin's saying is because i struggle with this a

[0:43:45] Voice 3: lot too in that what we observe in our region is different from what people observe in the okanagan

[0:43:51] Voice 3: or the caribou and when i talk to wildfire specialists in our region what they observe

[0:43:56] Voice 3: over and over again is that fire is is much more common in slash cut areas um and tends to

[0:44:05] Voice 3: extinguish as it hits mature forest with exactly what dr martin's been saying um so what we observe

[0:44:12] Voice 3: is like a sowow understory is incredibly fire resistant and soon as fire hits that regime

[0:44:18] Voice 3: it tends to kind of snuff out so um just you know from observed fire behavior that's what we see

[0:44:28] Voice 2: Very good. Thank you, Mitchell. Thank you, Tara. Ruth Waldek, I see your hand up.

[0:44:33] Voice 10: Thank you, Chair Luckum. Yes, and thank you, Tara, for that summary of a lot of thinking and

[0:44:41] Voice 10: complexity. That was nice and clear. What I wanted to point out about this tool that may not be

[0:44:47] Voice 10: self-evident is once you have all these data layers together, you can not only update them,

[0:44:54] Voice 10: but you can game with them so you can start to ask questions what happens if we change we remove the

[0:45:01] Voice 10: big tree layer you know how does that look different does it really have a significant

[0:45:06] Voice 10: effect on those areas that were selected in the in this algorithm the other thing you can do is

[0:45:12] Voice 10: you can add um structures so you can say gee let's get the layer i know that uh nicholas

[0:45:17] Voice 10: Corchier who I don't believe is here today but was on also on our on our panel he's got a layer that

[0:45:26] Voice 10: has built structures so you could add that layer in and then start to ask questions for example

[0:45:32] Voice 10: we know we've got these corridors of broom and gorse that you know that transect the island under

[0:45:37] Voice 10: the hydro lines so there's some pathways of fire and it allows for bringing people together so you

[0:45:46] Voice 10: of asking and exploring questions by by adding and removing layers and then just exploring patterns

[0:45:53] Voice 10: and discussing possibilities so it's really good for thinking through problems and then the other

[0:46:00] Voice 10: point i wanted to make is as new data become available so for example um we don't we don't

[0:46:07] Voice 10: have the we don't have fire data in there but i know the fire and rescue is going to be updating

[0:46:13] Voice 10: their fire hazard layer i believe it'll be probably in 2022 that's another layer that can

[0:46:19] Voice 10: be added in to then start to ask different questions um and then the you know in addition

[0:46:25] Voice 10: to that we also have to start asking questions about which forests are going to um are going

[0:46:34] Voice 10: to retain their health over time under these changing heat and extreme weather conditions so

[0:46:39] Voice 10: So having this tool set up allows for a lot of gaming and exploration that can be done

[0:46:45] Voice 10: through workshops or through, you know, individual projects with small teams.

[0:46:49] Voice 10: And so that is another really important value that I wanted to point out about going to

[0:46:55] Voice 10: this, going through this process.

[0:46:57] Voice 10: It's not for the output per se, it's because now you can explore all kinds of different

[0:47:02] Voice 10: possible questions.

[0:47:07] Voice 2: Thank you, Ruth.

[0:47:10] Trustee Luckham: Anybody else?

[0:47:12] Trustee Luckham: I'd like to acknowledge Riley Finn as your co-author here

[0:47:16] Trustee Luckham: and perhaps give him the opportunity to chime in,

[0:47:19] Trustee Luckham: not seeing any other hand up.

[0:47:21] Trustee Luckham: And I'll get you to lower your hand, Ruth.

[0:47:23] Trustee Luckham: Oh, I see Bryony's got her hand up as well.

[0:47:26] Trustee Luckham: I'll let you guys play it out.

[0:47:29] Voice 16: Well, I don't have much to add to what's already been said.

[0:47:32] Voice 16: I think what Ruth just brought up was a really good point

[0:47:35] Voice 16: about being able to examine different management scenarios

[0:47:40] Voice 16: areas and different priorities and seeing how that changes where we're getting these priority

[0:47:46] Voice 16: parcels of land to protect can inform what is driving the prioritization of these different

[0:47:54] Voice 16: areas and give information about where to act.

[0:48:04] Trustee Luckham: Okay, thank you. Bryony, and then I'll go to

[0:48:07] Trustee Luckham: William Schober.

[0:48:08] Voice 1: Thanks, everybody. And the flexibility that I wanted to emphasize to

[0:48:15] Voice 1: the trustees was that I know that you're going to be struggling with how do you communicate this

[0:48:22] Voice 1: to the public and your questions about static maps and some of the clunkiness that you experience in

[0:48:31] Voice 1: the policy world and and and having a a flexible tool like this that doesn't necessarily mesh with

[0:48:38] Voice 1: what your tools are available and uh that that created a lot of discussion within the group

[0:48:46] Voice 1: um because some of us are also have been sort of trying to work within these different realms of

[0:48:54] Voice 1: science and policy and one of the um one of the other i think beautiful aspects of this tool

[0:49:04] Voice 1: is that you can also just bring it down to watershed by watershed and you can define

[0:49:09] Voice 1: watersheds in a variety of ways but the rationale for that was to try and bring people to an

[0:49:16] Voice 1: an awareness that they are living in a watershed they have a role in it and so by making the

[0:49:25] Voice 1: weighting of of and ranking of importance based on a on a sort of watershed centric view gives

[0:49:33] Voice 1: people the sense that even though they might live in a fairly impoverished watershed in terms of

[0:49:37] Voice 1: forest cover what little forest cover they have is high high value and that they also are part of

[0:49:43] Voice 1: of that process to improve their watershed.

[0:49:48] Voice 1: So just as you're thinking about how to use this tool

[0:49:52] Voice 1: and where to go from here and how to take this

[0:49:58] Voice 1: to the next step, because you're experiencing

[0:50:02] Voice 1: the political window and a need to act

[0:50:06] Voice 1: and there's nothing concrete here that says,

[0:50:11] Voice 1: here's the map that's gonna go to the public

[0:50:12] Voice 1: and we're going to create a DPA or we're going to do this with it.

[0:50:17] Voice 1: But I really would encourage you to think about the role

[0:50:23] Voice 1: of engaging the public at that watershed level

[0:50:29] Voice 1: and trying to raise the notion that this isn't a static tool.

[0:50:36] Voice 1: There's increasing technologies like the LIDAR that can improve

[0:50:39] Voice 1: our updating of information and relevance and that at that watershed level it's going to be

[0:50:49] Voice 1: engage more people I think rather than them sort of getting overwhelmed by

[0:50:54] Voice 1: looking at the island as a whole and where naturally the most important areas

[0:51:02] Voice 1: if they haven't been adjusted to a watershed by watershed basis are not in areas where they live

[0:51:08] Voice 1: and and that i think disempowers people to some extent so i hope that was clear thank you yes

[0:51:18] Voice 2: uh uh william showbiz have is my next hand up here contribute uh

[0:51:27] Voice 15: great thank you chair um

[0:51:29] Voice 15: can we go back to the musgrave um slide please um

[0:51:37] Voice 14: so yeah like i um i was really grateful to be on

[0:51:41] Voice 14: on this working group to hear the perspective

[0:51:47] Voice 14: from different areas on how to protect forests and why.

[0:51:52] Voice 14: And of course I'm coming from a watershed ecosystem

[0:51:58] Voice 14: groundwater recharge perspective.

[0:52:01] Voice 14: And one of the main things when looking

[0:52:04] Voice 14: at groundwater recharge is that it does occur everywhere

[0:52:10] Voice 14: on the island, pretty much, there's areas that gain more recharge, mostly because they have

[0:52:18] Voice 14: higher energy, which means they're at higher elevation. And in order to sustain the little

[0:52:27] Voice 14: bit of water recharge we have right now, it needs to, the mechanism in which the water gets

[0:52:36] Voice 14: it's from precipitation into the soils, into healthy soils, and then into the bedrock below

[0:52:43] Voice 14: is not just a discrete area. And I'm worried that a map like this one that's showing is going to

[0:52:54] Voice 14: lead to not less but more fragmentation of the forest on Salt Spring. And even though

[0:53:02] Voice 14: sensitive ecosystems and big trees will be protected. Water moves downhill and there's

[0:53:11] Voice 14: this cumulative effect as water moves downhill on its recharge. And I just think that there

[0:53:22] Voice 14: needs to be a more robust discussion on what this map will actually resolve in a planning tool.

[0:53:33] Voice 14: rather than just going for the dark green,

[0:53:36] Voice 14: putting lines around it and calling a DPA

[0:53:38] Voice 14: like our steep slopes.

[0:53:39] Voice 14: I don't think that that would have a beneficial impact

[0:53:45] Voice 14: on preserving recharge.

[0:53:48] Voice 14: It might have a beneficial impact

[0:53:49] Voice 14: in preserving sense of ecosystems and big trees.

[0:53:53] Voice 14: I just, I have that worry.

[0:53:56] Voice 14: And since that was one of the top priorities

[0:53:59] Voice 14: of this project, I just wanted to raise that.

[0:54:02] Voice 14: that it just seems like we're looking at a fragmented solution rather than a cohesive

[0:54:09] Voice 14: continuous forest protection that would benefit groundwater recharge.

[0:54:18] Trustee Luckham: Thank you, William, for that, very much appreciated keeping our eyes on the horizon, so to speak.

[0:54:27] Trustee Luckham: So I see Trustee Patrick and then Ruth Waldick.

[0:54:31] Trustee Patrick: Yeah, I just wanted, I mean, I just want to assure William that I certainly don't look

[0:54:37] Trustee Patrick: at this tool as the answer of end all to be all.

[0:54:40] Trustee Patrick: It is a tool that I see has possibilities in all kinds of things.

[0:54:46] Trustee Patrick: And so I just wanted to assure him that that's not how I'm looking at this is we live in

[0:54:51] Trustee Patrick: a complex world.

[0:54:52] Trustee Patrick: We have lots of decisions.

[0:54:53] Trustee Patrick: We have lots of tools that are available to us in so many different ways.

[0:54:56] Trustee Patrick: And I think this has got potential in so many opportunities.

[0:55:03] Trustee Patrick: I can give you an example of sort of when we have decisions of someone has to make a

[0:55:11] Trustee Patrick: community amenity and they have to either donate land or put a covenant to protect their

[0:55:15] Trustee Patrick: land.

[0:55:15] Trustee Patrick: And how valuable is that?

[0:55:18] Trustee Patrick: This tool could help make that determination of that is a valuable piece of land to have

[0:55:24] Trustee Patrick: coveted and protected for forever or donated for as a park rather than a little piece that's off

[0:55:30] Trustee Patrick: that has you know very little um benefit or less um i would be and i know we're going to be moving

[0:55:38] Trustee Patrick: into the next section and i think um i like the um the sort of the the challenges of the forestry

[0:55:48] Trustee Patrick: uh the fire resiliency and the forest protection conversation that we were we were having sort of

[0:55:53] Trustee Patrick: the relationship to this tool the watershed and I love the watershed watershed centric

[0:56:00] Trustee Patrick: conversations we've had a few meetings I think they were through transition that people had to

[0:56:05] Trustee Patrick: introduce what watershed they were living in and looking at a map and it was so rich to hear

[0:56:11] Trustee Patrick: people's interaction for the first time oh wow I live in a watershed and it has a name or it had

[0:56:18] Trustee Patrick: had a number and it became it just it was so neat to see people become just aware of the whole

[0:56:24] Trustee Patrick: concept um but i'd look at you know we have all these choices and as we head into it the watershed

[0:56:31] Trustee Patrick: protection the fire resiliency and and i know mitchell we talk about sort of the current present

[0:56:39] Trustee Patrick: space of where we have buildings in the in the in the protection scheme we have with that but we

[0:56:46] Trustee Patrick: We also have a future state of where people want to put buildings and that we could influence those things as well.

[0:56:53] Trustee Patrick: So when we head into our next discussion, I'd like to sort of look at that.

[0:56:57] Trustee Patrick: We have the current state, what helps inform and build better management, if you want to think of it that way, of our current state.

[0:57:08] Trustee Patrick: But what helps us make choices that prevents or improves the conditions for our future generations?

[0:57:18] Voice 2: Thank you, I wanna call you Vice Chair Patrick,

[0:57:23] Voice 2: but Trustee Patrick in this particular case.

[0:57:26] Voice 2: Ruth Waldeck, over to you for your contribution.

[0:57:28] Voice 10: Yes, and I agree, Laura.

[0:57:32] Voice 10: I love the way the conversation is going,

[0:57:34] Voice 10: even though it might seem a bit odd to some people,

[0:57:38] Voice 10: but this kind of point that William raises

[0:57:41] Voice 10: and that Mitchell raises about, but what about this?

[0:57:46] Voice 10: that's sort of exactly what you want to engage in a conversation and use these layers to ask

[0:57:54] Voice 10: questions and explore different possible um meanings and interpretations and and that kind

[0:58:01] Voice 10: of discussion that brings together people from with different backgrounds can really lead to um

[0:58:08] Voice 10: insightful realizations about this is really important for this reason and then we didn't

[0:58:14] Voice 10: really, we hadn't thought about fire previously. I know with Transition Salt Spring, when I was

[0:58:19] Voice 10: doing the climate risk component for the Climate Action Plan, and I had many of these same people

[0:58:25] Voice 10: on an advisory group looking at risk, those conversations where you have people coming in

[0:58:32] Voice 10: from different perspectives and exploring a problem, especially at the watershed scale that

[0:58:37] Voice 10: Bryony was talking about, really, not only do they create new insights, but they also are easier to

[0:58:43] Voice 10: explain to people about why this choice was made for example by the trust in this watershed

[0:58:49] Voice 10: why didn't you think that was important or as important as we think it is or why did you think

[0:58:54] Voice 10: this was important when we don't think it's important so it's a really good narrative

[0:58:57] Voice 10: storytelling kind of approach that you can use with visual images like that but these questions

[0:59:03] Voice 10: um these difficult questions are sort of the thing that you want to workshop around and engage around

[0:59:08] Voice 10: around in order to get into a deeper understanding.

[0:59:11] Voice 10: So it is very useful tool and it allows people like William

[0:59:16] Voice 10: to raise these questions for others like to think

[0:59:21] Voice 10: about something they've

[0:59:23] Voice 8: never thought about before.

[0:59:28] Voice 12: Thank you, Ruth.

[0:59:30] Voice 12: I'll get you to lower your hand.

[0:59:32] Trustee Luckham: I see Susan Hannon would like to contribute.

[0:59:36] Trustee Luckham: So over to you, Susan.

[0:59:38] Voice 4: Yes, thank you.

[0:59:39] Voice 4: that I noticed there's been a couple of approaches that habitat fragmentation have been mentioned by

[0:59:46] Voice 4: previous panelists so Mitchell was saying that you know fragmentation is his friend in a sense

[0:59:54] Voice 4: I don't think he really means that at a larger scale but and then William was concerned

[1:00:00] Voice 4: about how this might increase fragmentation if it was applied in a watershed layer so are there

[1:00:06] Voice 4: ways of william i guess i didn't really understand what william meant by that if you could explain it

[1:00:12] Voice 4: a bit further um and also would it be would would the picture change if we actually overlaid the

[1:00:20] Voice 4: property boundaries onto this map because if you're going to do some sort of regulatory

[1:00:25] Voice 4: regulatory dpa or whatever you have to realize that that these green areas on the map might be

[1:00:32] Voice 4: several people's properties and then you have to think about what will the repercussions of that be

[1:00:37] Voice 4: with your dpa because you don't want to increase fragmentation so anyway i'd like to hear a little

[1:00:44] Voice 4: more from william on why he thought this approach might fragment systems um

[1:00:54] Voice 8: so

[1:00:57] Voice 14: i i'm not speaking

[1:00:59] Voice 14: Speaking to the approach of collecting data and doing recurrent analysis and different

[1:01:09] Voice 14: situational analysis like Ruth has explained that we can do with this work, I'm always

[1:01:15] Voice 14: encouraged in bringing primary data sets together and making derivative products like this.

[1:01:20] Voice 14: The one thing I was cautioning on is that if there is going to be a development permit

[1:01:26] Voice 14: area that's going to arise to protect CDF. And if the top priority of that is saying this is going

[1:01:34] Voice 14: to protect recharge, I'm worried that the map that's on the screen right now, if that's the

[1:01:41] Voice 14: resultant DPA map that looks like our DPA6 deep slopes, I don't think that that would adequately

[1:01:48] Voice 14: protect recharge due to the fragmentation. Like in my future view, 50 years down the road,

[1:01:56] Voice 14: looking at this map I'm like imagining these forest stands outlined with the green and like

[1:02:02] Voice 14: clear cuts for the white like at like the extreme case and I know that's not the case here but

[1:02:08] Voice 14: that's this looks like a fragmentation map and so that's why I'm I'm bringing that up perhaps

[1:02:16] Voice 14: in my perspective there should be a lot more green on here but I understand the metric to get

[1:02:24] Voice 14: to these polygons being green um and but but just like knowing this area and walking around and

[1:02:33] Voice 14: and understanding that there's pocket wetlands that are in white um that are great recharge

[1:02:39] Voice 14: areas that i'm just saying from that perspective of recharge it seems like this wouldn't be the

[1:02:46] Voice 14: protectionist approach to protecting recharge that's all i'm putting forward

[1:02:52] Trustee Luckham: um thank you

[1:02:54] Trustee Luckham: Thank you, William. And Susan, if you didn't have another remark, I'll get you to lower your hand.

[1:03:02] Trustee Luckham: And I'm not sure, Bryony, is your hand up there? It's a funny color. I don't know why that would

[1:03:07] Trustee Luckham: be.

[1:03:10] Voice 1: It is, but I'm going to let Tara go because she's probably going to say what I was going to

[1:03:14] Voice 1: say. Perfect.

[1:03:17] Voice 13: I just want to respond to William's comments. It's always challenging to give a

[1:03:25] Voice 13: presentation like this and to choose a map. We purposely didn't put up, you know, a whole map

[1:03:32] Voice 13: of Salt Spring and we purposely didn't convert this into cadastral parcels for this particular

[1:03:39] Voice 13: meeting. And we only showed one particular scenario. So I think that we shouldn't get too

[1:03:47] Voice 13: hung up on what this this map on the screen here is showing but rather think about the value of the

[1:03:55] Voice 13: tool and how we can use the tool to make sure that we're capturing the things that are important to

[1:04:01] Voice 13: us and you know working with you William to make sure that the way we're implement you know we're

[1:04:06] Voice 13: incorporating water recharge is an intelligent way to do it is is really you know that's where

[1:04:14] Voice 13: we want to get to, rather than getting too concerned about that particular map on the screen.

[1:04:22] Voice 14: Oh yeah, I appreciate that and I'm totally on board, like I've been a proponent of this project

[1:04:27] Voice 14: and I'm really encouraged where we got to. I'm just speaking from experience. Once there is a

[1:04:35] Voice 14: deliverable that comes out and there's colours on the map, planners and politicians want to use it.

[1:04:41] Voice 14: So I'm just cautioning that perspective because I have done other work on other islands where I get the recharge map or get the groundwater vulnerability map and there's colors on the screen and the planners want to use it the next day on their application or implement it into an OCP review or a land use bylaw review.

[1:05:07] Voice 14: review so i that that's just my that's my perspective on on producing the output because

[1:05:16] Voice 14: this this um page is saying the example output so out of all the good work that we've done and

[1:05:24] Voice 14: all of the discussions what will be the resulting final output and how would the politicians and the

[1:05:32] Voice 14: planners then use that output um and i understand there's gonna be more conversation around that and

[1:05:39] Voice 14: and i'm just adding to that more conversation now um with the perspective of recharge yeah thanks

[1:05:45] Voice 14: thank

[1:05:46] Trustee Luckham: you william um i'll go to brian to see if you want to follow up here um or

[1:05:56] Trustee Luckham: Yeah,

[1:05:56] Voice 1: thanks. Thanks, Chair Luckham. I just wanted to, yeah, put another kind of finer point to that, which was this map, for example, was making the assumption that there was going to be nature needs half.

[1:06:16] Voice 1: That was, you know, a UN sort of hope that nature would needs half.

[1:06:27] Voice 1: So, and strangely, it has this reaction where it's like, ah, nature needs half is not even

[1:06:36] Voice 1: enough.

[1:06:38] Voice 1: And there was also a reason why Tara decided not to, and as a group, decided not to produce

[1:06:46] Voice 1: a map that would somehow get into uh the public realm because it has it has a reaction both ways

[1:06:56] Voice 1: um so for example if you the the tool though let's say you make the assumption that we're

[1:07:02] Voice 1: all going to work to try and integrate the natural world into every single inch of salt

[1:07:09] Voice 1: spring and you change the metrics you would have a map that has shades of all those shades of green

[1:07:16] Voice 1: in it um because you'd be going through the percentages because and maybe tar you can you

[1:07:22] Voice 1: can explain how the algorithm works but when you're trying to make hard and fast rules it

[1:07:27] Voice 1: says yeah nature needs half because you're being given a particular planning constraint which is

[1:07:33] Voice 1: is it it it produces these maps whereas if you're saying as a society we're going to try and and

[1:07:40] Voice 1: understand the importance of all of these and the relative importance they're all important

[1:07:45] Voice 1: they're all green, some are more important.

[1:07:49] Voice 1: I think it changes the perception of the public

[1:07:52] Voice 1: and maybe as a tool, as an educational tool,

[1:07:56] Voice 1: just getting all those shades of green on

[1:07:59] Voice 1: to show relative importance

[1:08:01] Voice 1: is offset some of the concerns that William's been raising.

[1:08:06] Voice 1: So Tara, you might want to add to that.

[1:08:11] Voice 13: Yeah, thanks Bryony and thanks William.

[1:08:14] Voice 13: one of the so you know in terms of a spatial optimization while this is a complex problem

[1:08:20] Voice 13: it's still it's a it's a very small it's still a small problem and because we have this high

[1:08:26] Voice 13: target and 50 percent protection of of each ecosystem there's not a lot of there's there's

[1:08:35] Voice 13: not a lot of variation in the solutions and so we get this in terms of the selection frequency

[1:08:40] Voice 13: frequency of parcels, you're either really at the high end, you know, you're always being selected,

[1:08:46] Voice 13: or you're at the low end. If we had a lower target, and more, more, more variables that

[1:08:54] Voice 13: we're looking across, we would see a finer gradient. And is which that's what Brian is

[1:09:01] Voice 13: talking about. But when what we're seeing here is is kind of the result of having this, this

[1:09:07] Voice 13: this high target and then we're also what's also those areas outlined in pink I mean they are dark

[1:09:15] Voice 13: green those areas are already locked into the solution so we need to keep that in mind that

[1:09:21] Voice 13: anywhere you're seeing the satellite image of the of the land that is dark green.

[1:09:29] Trustee Luckham: Okay thank you

[1:09:31] Trustee Luckham: I want to kind of stimulate the next you know particularly focus on the next section here

[1:09:37] Trustee Luckham: in respect of our timing about possible approaches going forward but before then I just want to

[1:09:47] Trustee Luckham: note from my own perspective you know and some of you will know I'm a biosphere United Nations

[1:09:54] Trustee Luckham: NESCO biosphere fan and so I'll just say that you know there's multiple elements here that

[1:10:03] Trustee Luckham: that we've heard about, which is watershed protection,

[1:10:06] Trustee Luckham: indeed the Coast of Douglas Fir,

[1:10:07] Trustee Luckham: which is this specific project.

[1:10:09] Trustee Luckham: And of course, what we're learning,

[1:10:11] Trustee Luckham: which is a continually growing knowledge about wildfire.

[1:10:16] Trustee Luckham: And just note that for those of you that don't know,

[1:10:19] Trustee Luckham: I'm also a firefighter and on our island,

[1:10:22] Trustee Luckham: on Thetis at the very beginning of the summer there,

[1:10:25] Trustee Luckham: we were very fortunate in that we had a fire.

[1:10:27] Trustee Luckham: And indeed, by the time we got there,

[1:10:31] Trustee Luckham: most of it had burned itself out and those natural ecosystem components early in the

[1:10:37] Trustee Luckham: drier part of the season actually helped us control that fire because if it had been a

[1:10:43] Trustee Luckham: different ecosystem it would likely have spread and been had been devastating to this island

[1:10:48] Trustee Luckham: and so there's some very real components there that is a learning thing but what I think about

[1:10:54] Trustee Luckham: this coastal Douglas fir piece and the mapping that we have here is the biosphere suggests that

[1:11:00] Trustee Luckham: we should look at the core values and figure out what the core values are. And then because we're

[1:11:05] Trustee Luckham: human beings and we like mathematics and geometry, we talk about circles spreading out from the core

[1:11:10] Trustee Luckham: values and how we mitigate the human impacts, the necessary human impacts for the human species to

[1:11:20] Trustee Luckham: continue to prosper. That's the right way of putting it. So those circles going out,

[1:11:25] Trustee Luckham: which I think addresses some of the issues that William's bringing to the table,

[1:11:28] Trustee Luckham: all is that these are the core values and how do we protect the surrounding areas to protect those

[1:11:34] Trustee Luckham: core values and um so i'll just leave those remarks with you and just maybe focus um how it

[1:11:42] Trustee Luckham: is that we might move forward here because certainly there's other people other voices

[1:11:47] Trustee Luckham: out there that um have different points of view and perspectives and obviously getting this message

[1:11:53] Trustee Luckham: out and reaching a common understanding about what it is that all of us are concerned about

[1:12:00] Trustee Luckham: in order to gain all support to advance this work so that, as was very nicely pointed out,

[1:12:09] Trustee Luckham: at the beginning of this, is it's not just about ecosystem protection, but it's about future

[1:12:15] Trustee Luckham: generations and it's about local industry and and work and we need to pull that together to

[1:12:22] Trustee Luckham: understand how this is all going to work for everybody and and have a common understanding

[1:12:27] Trustee Luckham: about why we're doing it so I'll just toss that out and see and if anybody else wishes to speak

[1:12:33] Trustee Luckham: and before I just let the mic go I'm just going to say you know the laptop batteries age and get

[1:12:39] Trustee Luckham: get old as as we do and I may get disconnected and have to join you by phone so others

[1:12:45] Trustee Luckham: vice chair um uh on the executive committee perhaps you might uh chair if I'm disconnected

[1:12:53] Trustee Luckham: and I will turn as quickly as I can and I see a hand up but trustee Patrick over to you

[1:12:59] Trustee Luckham: I

[1:13:01] Trustee Patrick: was excited about getting to this point of the conversation that's all and I apologize for not

[1:13:05] Trustee Patrick: acknowledging and be how grateful I was to Tara when I first powered into that question because

[1:13:10] Trustee Patrick: I was like, I want to think of the future already. I'm very grateful and I'm very proud to see this

[1:13:15] Trustee Patrick: work. To me, the Islands Trust mandate is clear. We don't exist without cooperating with others.

[1:13:24] Trustee Patrick: So this group of people is an absolute representation of how we have to work

[1:13:33] Trustee Patrick: on our islands to achieve any level of preserving and protecting that's within our mandate.

[1:13:41] Trustee Patrick: Um, I'm really, uh, interested in sort of building on what I'm seeing happening out there

[1:13:49] Trustee Patrick: right now with the, there's a, there's a huge interest in, in wildfire. A lot of it's driven

[1:13:55] Trustee Patrick: by fear. I talk to people all the time, you know, I've got a 60 acre common property in our strata

[1:14:01] Trustee Patrick: and it's, you know, I think it should be cut down or, you know, they're, they're afraid of these

[1:14:06] Trustee Patrick: chunks of forest. And, you know, we see people moving to the area and their first thing is fear

[1:14:14] Trustee Patrick: that, you know, I got to cut all the trees down because I'm afraid that my house is going to burn

[1:14:19] Trustee Patrick: down. And so we have a lot of fear driving the wildfire risk. And I see the work that's being

[1:14:28] Trustee Patrick: done in partnership with the conservancy, the fire department and transitions with going out

[1:14:33] Trustee Patrick: and meeting with neighborhoods and helping them build their plans, either on individual or

[1:14:38] Trustee Patrick: neighborhood basis of how to kind of get over that fear and move into more of a management approach.

[1:14:45] Trustee Patrick: And I do recall a few years ago, the former chief there, AJ, came and appealed to the

[1:14:56] Trustee Patrick: the local trust committee about having some sort of a wildfire or a fire

[1:15:01] Trustee Patrick: protection development permit area or something of that nature.

[1:15:05] Trustee Patrick: And I think things have changed a bit since then,

[1:15:06] Trustee Patrick: but I'm intrigued by sort of,

[1:15:09] Trustee Patrick: I think of the spectrum of, of, of choices we face from, you know,

[1:15:14] Trustee Patrick: nothing to sort of the education communication steps to, you know,

[1:15:19] Trustee Patrick: moving toward regulatory, you know, kind of on the other end. And I,

[1:15:23] Trustee Patrick: And I sort of think of this opportunity to really build on the fire resiliency.

[1:15:29] Trustee Patrick: And I'd like to sort of get some ideas of what kind of tools or protections could we do that would inform the current people who already live here, but to also really inform the decisions we make as we develop anything new.

[1:15:46] Trustee Patrick: And I see somebody that might have high interest has his hand up.

[1:15:53] Voice 8: uh yeah so going

[1:15:55] Voice 3: um it's interesting because i found this process to be really educational for

[1:16:01] Voice 3: me and i and i'm really glad that i've had the input from uh dr hannon dr waldick um and dr

[1:16:08] Voice 3: martin to learn more about how um as i said that that macro scale of protecting the forest can

[1:16:14] Voice 3: help protect our community but um and as i but as i had pointed out um earlier my my discipline

[1:16:20] Voice 3: where I come from is about managing once the forest is already on fire or once a house is

[1:16:26] Voice 3: on fire, how we can stop it from spreading to the forest. And that's why I'm hoping that the tools

[1:16:32] Voice 3: that we develop going down the road will factor that in. On the one hand, yes, we want to protect

[1:16:39] Voice 3: the forest to help make them fire resistant, fire resilient. But on the other hand, we also need to

[1:16:46] Voice 3: look at the human values after all we are human centric being humans that um we don't want our

[1:16:53] Voice 3: homes to burn down and so we need to kind of temper whatever tools we end up using to protect

[1:17:01] Voice 3: the forest to enable people to protect structures so what what works in one area those tools we need

[1:17:10] Voice 3: to adapt them to work in others. So whereas we might want to have some restrictions on what

[1:17:17] Voice 3: kind of activities people can do in the forest, when we're looking at a yard environment, like

[1:17:23] Voice 3: immediately around buildings, we might want to maintain the ability to clear vegetation to help

[1:17:31] Voice 3: protect structures. So I find it really interesting, that interplay of how different strategies can

[1:17:38] Voice 3: work in different locations and then looking to the future i think our forests are going to be

[1:17:45] Voice 3: much more at risk in the future if if the climate predictions are accurate and i believe they will

[1:17:49] Voice 3: be that you know we we could see uh increasing winter storm activity that could cause more

[1:17:56] Voice 3: blowdowns that could then put those um those dead trees from either you know heat domes in

[1:18:07] Voice 3: more at risk forest so we need to be able to in turn then protect structures so there's it's a

[1:18:15] Voice 3: very complex relationship um so i just i'm hoping that whatever tools we we adopt we maintain that

[1:18:23] Voice 3: flexibility to look both at the at the big picture let's let's protect the forest to keep them

[1:18:28] Voice 3: healthy so that they're less at risk for fire but then also keeping tools available that if we are

[1:18:34] Voice 3: are facing fire, we can help reduce the risk to individual structures. And I look forward to

[1:18:40] Voice 3: hearing from the other people on the panel. And as I said, I found it really educational myself to

[1:18:45] Voice 3: look at those different perspectives.

[1:18:57] Voice 8: Sorry, I had myself muted. Ruth

[1:18:59] Voice 12: Waldick, over to you.

[1:19:04] Voice 10: Thanks. Now we're getting into the conversation that I love, which is, I've already mentioned it,

[1:19:09] Voice 10: it's when you start to game and troubleshoot together with people from different disciplines.

[1:19:15] Voice 10: and it's been an incredible learning experience being out with a permaculturalist you know a

[1:19:22] Voice 10: fragmentation specialist and you know someone who knows the the botany here and a fire specialist

[1:19:28] Voice 10: I have to say it's been very stimulating and every site's a little bit different

[1:19:32] Voice 10: and so the storyline though that's really interesting that I'll start off with is

[1:19:37] Voice 10: we have to go back to what Bryony mentioned we have to look at the watershed and I guess this

[1:19:43] Voice 10: is also what William is saying and then we can start to tell the stories that Mitchell wants to

[1:19:48] Voice 10: hear where are the houses and where are the important areas for different things so a wetland

[1:19:54] Voice 10: can protect can prevent the spread of fire we also want to protect wetlands and there are many of the

[1:20:00] Voice 10: areas that are sort of wetter on our island that also have big trees and they also have really

[1:20:06] Voice 10: really important, older, more mature forests and interesting biodiversity.

[1:20:12] Voice 10: So there's this kind of integration, this interface that happens when you start to look

[1:20:18] Voice 10: at a place with more knowledge.

[1:20:20] Voice 10: And so I think what I think we have missing, and Tara mentioned this at the beginning,

[1:20:27] Voice 10: is we don't actually know um how to steward these forests for climate change nor for the um the fire

[1:20:37] Voice 10: risk that we've created from legacy you know behaviors and policies and with the climate

[1:20:43] Voice 10: change in the future so the value um of this kind of thing is to then ask that question and start to

[1:20:51] Voice 10: collect data so i'll just mention um a project that we got funded and we're we're collaborating

[1:20:57] Voice 10: with basically everyone here to start to collect some data on a watershed that could then populate

[1:21:05] Voice 10: more information into these kind of problem solving around the Maxwell watershed and say

[1:21:11] Voice 10: how where is the fire hazard where is the fire risk that we're seeing in this watershed

[1:21:16] Voice 10: bring in the experts to talk about what is it or that are the treatments and the things that we

[1:21:22] Voice 10: could do where are the structures where are the opportunities with the forests and by doing

[1:21:26] Voice 8: sorry okay I thought that

[1:21:34] Voice 10: was something I said red alert oh maybe that was Mitchell

[1:21:40] Voice 10: so basically you know this this sort of discourse we need more information and so we do have funding

[1:21:48] Voice 10: we will be going forward to do some work and that information then can be populated back into this

[1:21:53] Voice 10: at a watershed scale to start to answer the various questions about protecting watershed

[1:21:59] Voice 10: protecting the forest, reducing fire risk.

[1:22:02] Voice 10: And so, as Bryony said, this kind of next step

[1:22:07] Voice 10: is to make it relevant to people,

[1:22:11] Voice 10: make it relevant to the geography

[1:22:13] Voice 10: and the layout of Salt Spring.

[1:22:16] Voice 10: And so I'm not sure if it's appropriate for me

[1:22:19] Voice 10: to mention the delegation that I did

[1:22:23] Voice 10: to the local trust recently,

[1:22:25] Voice 10: recently, just to say that we need to collect information about fire, fire risk and treatments

[1:22:31] Voice 10: that would be appropriate in the coastal Douglas fir zone because we don't have that kind of

[1:22:35] Voice 10: information now. And so that is, I think, an important step that could then collect more

[1:22:40] Voice 10: information and more insight that can then be fed back into a tool like this to ask a different set

[1:22:46] Voice 10: of questions.

[1:22:49] Trustee Luckham: Okay, thank you, Ruth. I've got a number of speakers here now. We've got things

[1:22:54] Trustee Luckham: is rolling here so brian uh trustee patrick and then tara martin again um

[1:23:03] Voice 1: so i think the other

[1:23:04] Voice 1: the other project that that the trustees might be interested in is you know there is a there is a

[1:23:11] Voice 1: substantive body of information about fire that's been accumulated over the last 5 000 years and

[1:23:17] Voice 1: that is with first nations and so there is a um there is a i don't know how you'd call it right

[1:23:26] Voice 1: now um what are we um the wasanage leadership council are leading um conversations right now

[1:23:35] Voice 1: um and with a wide group of um different organizations and researchers that are

[1:23:44] Voice 1: interested in the question about how effective was traditional stewardship patterns on all sorts

[1:23:51] Voice 1: of things to all the questions that we're putting biodiversity water management and storage fire

[1:23:59] Voice 1: fire regulation and management and so um it's an elder-led initiative we're trying to seek funding

[1:24:07] Voice 1: um we're getting little bits here and there it's it's kind of a novel concept because what we're

[1:24:13] Voice 1: were saying is that here's, there's a, you know, a strong support for Indigenous-led stewardship

[1:24:23] Voice 1: practices, but there's not a lot of hard data that says, well, this is in Western,

[1:24:30] Voice 1: you know, scientific circles that this is an effective

[1:24:35] Voice 1: prescription for fire management. So we're trying to give, elders are looking for support

[1:24:42] Voice 1: court to try and bring back a lot of these restoration stewardship practices so that we

[1:24:50] Voice 1: can have some pilots so this doesn't solve your short-term problems as policy and planners and

[1:24:59] Voice 1: politicians but I think it's again I just want to emphasize that we do there is a lot going on

[1:25:08] Voice 1: One, there are a lot of, there's a lot of expertise in terms of, when Mitchell talks about different prescriptions for different places, this is long, this is a long, well-known practices that you, you know, you didn't burn in your wetlands.

[1:25:28] Voice 1: you burned in your in your kind of gary oak ecosystems and you did it in very specific times

[1:25:33] Voice 1: very specific places and um it was highly controlled so you know we already have this

[1:25:41] Voice 1: information we and we're trying to support um the nations to get that information to you know

[1:25:50] Voice 1: So all of us, and also to get pilots back so that people can come and look at them and see the, you know, the application of these ideas, because most of these stewardship practices have been, you know, prohibited, or, you know, it's been private land has prevented them from happening.

[1:26:11] Voice 1: So I just wanted to mention that and it's, it's, I think that the conversation is continuing and we'll continue to find funding for that. And it also leads into the what we've, we were suggesting right at the start is that we need some incentives and tools to do good stewardship.

[1:26:29] Voice 1: And we are looking at a blue-green carbon project model, but it's very complex.

[1:26:37] Voice 1: It is very complex because there's just so many jurisdictions, and the methodology isn't – it's complicated.

[1:26:50] Voice 1: You've got a lot of different ecosystems.

[1:26:54] Trustee Luckham: Okay, thank you, Bryony.

[1:26:56] Trustee Luckham: Trustee Patrick, and then Trustee Tara Martin.

[1:27:00] Trustee Patrick: Well, thank you.

[1:27:01] Trustee Patrick: Thank you, Bryony.

[1:27:01] Trustee Patrick: I mean, I don't play in this political policy world very well, and I think that's one of the reasons why we have the problems that we have, because we look at things like, oh, let's fix this, check, next, and our ecosystems, and so forth, don't work that way, and I'm hoping that this project, I know sometimes staff, Jason's like, well, we're not getting anything done.

[1:27:27] Trustee Patrick: I'm like, yes, we are. We're having conversations. Things are happening. And I think we have to be able to change our mindset and realize that, you know, yes, we have this political world that we're in, but we need to really set up the foundations to allow this work to carry on, be supported and funded.

[1:27:48] Trustee Patrick: it and Island's Trust plays a role in what it can do to help keep this going is how I see it.

[1:27:55] Trustee Patrick: This is not, we're not going to have a check, we're done. We didn't fix this. So I really,

[1:28:03] Trustee Patrick: I'm looking for help. I'm looking at the partnerships we're growing, how we can

[1:28:07] Trustee Patrick: formalize these, how we can make sure that they don't fall off the table, like with the next

[1:28:13] Trustee Patrick: election or whatever happens that these become sustained in long term. I guess one of the

[1:28:20] Trustee Patrick: questions I have, I look at again to Mitchell, so I want to poke at this, we have the existing

[1:28:30] Trustee Patrick: build but we have the risk of large green swaths of the island that could be developed and I guess

[1:28:37] Trustee Patrick: Mitchell if I were to put a political hat on you instead of a fire hat, are there parts, I mean

[1:28:43] Trustee Patrick: how urgent would you feel of preventing more structures being built in certain parts of the

[1:28:50] Trustee Patrick: island loaded question yeah

[1:28:58] Voice 3: well it's just it's interesting i guess that doesn't really fall

[1:29:02] Voice 3: under my purview my my my work is about um is it's about protection and it's funny our discipline is

[1:29:11] Voice 3: It's really built on a reactiveness, unfortunately.

[1:29:16] Voice 3: So I have a lot more training and how to react than how to prevent,

[1:29:20] Voice 3: even though it's funny, my, my particular job is fire prevention.

[1:29:24] Voice 3: So my training is all about protecting what's already there rather than

[1:29:30] Voice 3: planning for what isn't there yet.

[1:29:33] Voice 3: And so I would have to defer to the people who've researched that,

[1:29:37] Voice 3: that more effectively. Yeah.

[1:29:41] Voice 3: Yeah, as I said, what I would love to see is planning for the future.

[1:29:47] Voice 3: If we're going to be living in a different kind of climate 20 years from now, that we plan wisely about where those builds will happen and give people the tools they need to.

[1:30:00] Voice 3: build their homes in the right locations with appropriate protections and then appropriate

[1:30:06] Voice 3: protections for the larger ecosystem um so yeah that's that's where where where my focus would lie

[1:30:14] Voice 3: is is um building wisely rather than um nestling our homes in the forest the way we we like to um

[1:30:25] Voice 3: maybe being a little bit more mindful of creating a bit more space

[1:30:31] Voice 3: from the forest, maybe having forests protected

[1:30:33] Voice 3: and our homes a little bit more separated from them.

[1:30:38] Voice 3: I'm kind of mixed on my feelings about it because, you know,

[1:30:43] Voice 3: aesthetically I like living in a forest, but from a fire perspective,

[1:30:49] Voice 3: it's a lot harder to protect those homes.

[1:30:51] Voice 3: um

[1:30:53] Trustee Luckham: thank you very much um for that message uh mitchell i wanted to jump in earlier

[1:30:59] Trustee Luckham: just in case we lost the thread here but um just following up on that i'll just

[1:31:05] Trustee Luckham: help to stimulate the conversation um you know we're living actually presently with 150 years

[1:31:14] Trustee Luckham: years, let's call it, of a legacy of colonial homes and architecture and a way of living in a

[1:31:23] Trustee Luckham: place. And indeed, thank you, Bryony, there is a different way to live in this place. And that was

[1:31:30] Trustee Luckham: what was historically practiced with higher densities of populations in smaller geographic

[1:31:34] Trustee Luckham: areas and management. We didn't actually, I would suggest anyway, that there wasn't a high density

[1:31:41] Trustee Luckham: of people living in the forest which we are now and um aj uh fire chief on salt spring that i know

[1:31:47] Trustee Luckham: he came to us with a plea to do some kind of development permits to do this welfare protection

[1:31:52] Trustee Luckham: thing and the key there uh mitchell of course is protection um and prevention and uh prevention is

[1:31:59] Trustee Luckham: the is uh as as a firefighter with the feet in both worlds here um um we need to as laura has

[1:32:08] Trustee Luckham: has asked the question, we need to look at where it is that we're continuing to build homes in the

[1:32:13] Trustee Luckham: landscape that exists in order to not continue the legacy of maybe what is not well-founded in a

[1:32:20] Trustee Luckham: climate change scenario that we're living in now. And indeed, certainly cedar shakes were something

[1:32:24] Trustee Luckham: people considered not doing anymore. Different kinds of siding is something that we don't do

[1:32:29] Trustee Luckham: anymore. And now, of course, the 10 meter, 30 meter setbacks from the wildland areas in order

[1:32:35] Trustee Luckham: to stop, as Michael has really clearly indicated, stopping the fires and houses from spreading to

[1:32:41] Trustee Luckham: the forest. It's not just the forest on fire setting fire to the houses, and that's the

[1:32:47] Trustee Luckham: primary function of a fire department, is to stop the external exposures to stop those houses that

[1:32:53] Trustee Luckham: are on fire from spreading to the forest and spreading to other homes. So I just wanted to

[1:32:57] Trustee Luckham: to provide that little stimulus.

[1:32:59] Trustee Luckham: But let's go to William Shoba, Susan Hannon,

[1:33:05] Trustee Luckham: and I'm not sure, Brian, if your hand is still up

[1:33:08] Trustee Luckham: from before or, yeah, there you go.

[1:33:11] Trustee Luckham: Okay, William Shoba and Susan Hannon.

[1:33:13] Trustee Luckham: And if I drop off, Laura, I trust you'll take over.

[1:33:17] Voice 14: Thanks, Chair.

[1:33:18] Voice 14: Yeah, just commenting on something that Brian,

[1:33:22] Voice 14: he said that brought up an idea

[1:33:25] Voice 14: that I've been throwing around in my head for a while.

[1:33:27] Voice 14: I had the opportunity to go explore some lands in the Cowichan with Tim Kuchelski and some other

[1:33:34] Voice 14: Indigenous knowledge holders. And they were describing on how fluid, for lack of a better

[1:33:43] Voice 14: term, the rivers of the Cowichan and the Coxilla were at one time. And as development happened

[1:33:51] Voice 14: in that area and more of this colonialist style of building occurred, the rivers were then

[1:33:59] Voice 14: impacting those people's way of life. So then the dams and dikes were then put on the river

[1:34:08] Voice 14: to control the river. And in the last few years, there's been multi-million dollar projects to

[1:34:15] Voice 14: to increase those dams and dikes and direct the river more.

[1:34:19] Voice 14: So much so that because the rivers aren't moving anymore,

[1:34:23] Voice 14: they're getting silted up and sediment is occurring.

[1:34:26] Voice 14: So there's actually a large project

[1:34:28] Voice 14: through the Healthy Watersheds Initiative

[1:34:29] Voice 14: to go in there with big machines

[1:34:31] Voice 14: and actually move out the river gravels out of the river

[1:34:35] Voice 14: to encourage the salmon and the steelhead to do their runs.

[1:34:39] Voice 14: And the synergy I see with that on Salt Spring

[1:34:44] Voice 14: are property lines and the fact that the landscape is now locked down with these property lines and

[1:34:51] Voice 14: there's such a societal push of ownership from property line to property line i just

[1:34:59] Voice 14: find that that is one of their significant challenges to start implementing more of these

[1:35:05] Voice 14: eco-based solutions ecosystem-based solutions including traditional knowledge solutions

[1:35:11] Voice 14: solutions and and that just goes back to my first perspective of the fragmentation

[1:35:18] Voice 14: that that we should identify solutions that have more contiguous nature um because i believe that's

[1:35:27] Voice 14: how the ecosystems are put together but anyway i just wanted to bring up that perspective and

[1:35:31] Voice 14: and that um i don't know if we just lost oh there's chair luckham um i agree with you and

[1:35:36] Voice 14: and i just sent a quick note to jason on the over email saying like we've there's been unprecedented

[1:35:43] Voice 14: growth in the last 50 years um on these islands and we don't really even know if this works

[1:35:50] Voice 14: yet especially from the groundwater uh perspective there's there's a lot of lag time with groundwater

[1:35:57] Voice 14: resource it can be up to 10 years and so um going into a changing climate um it's perhaps

[1:36:06] Voice 14: Perhaps we just have just enough right now, rather than having a perspective of where can we put more development might be the fact that we just can't have any more, especially in areas where recharge and ecosystems, watershed ecosystems need to be protected.

[1:36:24] Voice 14: But anyway, I'm going to just leave that there. I just thought that was an interesting synergy between the dikes and dams on the couch and the coaxial compared to property lines in Salt Spring.

[1:36:39] Trustee Luckham: Very good. Thank you, William, for bringing that perspective. Susan Hannon, over to you.

[1:36:43] Trustee Luckham: Yeah,

[1:36:44] Voice 4: I guess I'll go back to previous thoughts. For quite a while, I guess the last 10-15 years

[1:36:51] Voice 4: of my career as an academic, I did work a fair amount with forest management, trying to look at

[1:36:59] Voice 4: ecosystem management across larger landscapes. And so I'm trying to think about this discussion

[1:37:06] Voice 4: of prescriptive management versus more dynamic management. And I think in a planning area,

[1:37:12] Voice 4: Very often, planners want to have a prescriptive approach because it's easier to lay it out and explain it, and it's easier to check on it.

[1:37:23] Voice 4: And I think that certainly was the case in forest management across Western Canada, and particularly in BC.

[1:37:32] Voice 4: We've seen a period when the NDP was in when we had the forest practices code when things were reasonably prescriptive.

[1:37:42] Voice 4: You have to leave a buffer of so many meters along streams, you cut likes can only be so big, etc.

[1:37:49] Voice 4: Versus, and then that's laid out the same everywhere.

[1:37:52] Voice 4: So that may not be the best approach.

[1:37:55] Voice 4: It might be much better to have a dynamic approach where you have a goal.

[1:37:59] Voice 4: and what we used to call it was the desired future forest so where do you want to get to

[1:38:07] Voice 4: and then you can play with the models and see you know does a prescriptive approach

[1:38:12] Voice 4: get you to that desired future forest or do we need something that's much more dynamic depending

[1:38:19] Voice 4: on your position in the watershed depending on whether you're in a high value ecosystem and so

[1:38:25] Voice 4: on so just just a thought about different approaches that you might use sorry

[1:38:35] Trustee Luckham: did you

[1:38:36] Trustee Luckham: finish there Susan yes okay great um you know uh William unless you wanted to say something more

[1:38:43] Trustee Luckham: your hand could go down and uh maybe I'll just stimulate um some thoughts I sort of think about

[1:38:50] Trustee Luckham: the Gulf Islands uh from a very broad perspective and and that I think of three different eras

[1:38:56] Trustee Luckham: that existed, which was, of course, pre-contract as the first era. And then I think of the steamships

[1:39:03] Trustee Luckham: as the end of an era that marked resource extraction, agriculture, forestry, fishing,

[1:39:11] Trustee Luckham: and then the BC ferries era, which is, I think we're still in. And of course, in that era,

[1:39:17] Trustee Luckham: the Allen's Trust was created, which people consider it the grand experiment. And indeed,

[1:39:22] Trustee Luckham: We're still in the midst of this experimental age

[1:39:26] Trustee Luckham: and coming to understand what has happened

[1:39:29] Trustee Luckham: since what I think of as the end of the steamship era

[1:39:32] Trustee Luckham: and that it has forced the Gulf Islands

[1:39:35] Trustee Luckham: and the people that have been here

[1:39:36] Trustee Luckham: to create something new that never did exist before.

[1:39:41] Trustee Luckham: This number of people living here in this way

[1:39:43] Trustee Luckham: and consuming water and resources

[1:39:46] Trustee Luckham: in a very different way than was done historically.

[1:39:50] Trustee Luckham: And so here we are.

[1:39:52] Trustee Luckham: and I don't see any of the hands up, but at 1040, if there's further remarks or sharing that we'd

[1:39:58] Trustee Luckham: like to do, I'm really happy to hear more. Trustee Patrick, over to you.

[1:40:03] Trustee Patrick: Lots of hands up. I just really wanted to build on, thank you, Susan, for,

[1:40:08] Trustee Patrick: I love all these doctors around here, and it's like being back in university again,

[1:40:12] Trustee Patrick: and so thank you. This is fun and stimulating. I do like the dynamic, and I think of, you know,

[1:40:21] Trustee Patrick: you're right as a planning organization what is the goal of our desired future state because it's

[1:40:27] Trustee Patrick: I think that is an interesting conversation one that could be you know very you know done in an

[1:40:34] Trustee Patrick: educational wise way with with the community and then I look at you know the work that we're doing

[1:40:41] Trustee Patrick: and we have Ruth is correct she's identified the the ecology forest ecology and building

[1:40:49] Trustee Patrick: with what Bryony said, we have the First Nations, so there's that whole kind of forest ecology,

[1:40:54] Trustee Patrick: First Nations, and as it equates to practices and learning and stewardship that needs, you know,

[1:40:59] Trustee Patrick: that people need just education, communication, and those materials need to be created, shared,

[1:41:04] Trustee Patrick: taught, and how they relate to fire and those things, and I think there's a whole piece of work

[1:41:09] Trustee Patrick: there that's heavy on the education communication side, and then we have sort of the ongoing

[1:41:15] Trustee Patrick: going planning um of of the goal state and um um and so i guess i'm i'm asking from this group are

[1:41:23] Trustee Patrick: we would you feel that we really got should dig in further into that side of the community the

[1:41:30] Trustee Patrick: communications and education phase for longer um and what we could do to you know to support that

[1:41:38] Voice 2: uh tara martin and then mitchell again and ruth thanks

[1:41:49] Voice 13: trustee patrick i'm i'll i'll circle back

[1:41:53] Voice 13: to to that point i think if we based on the data that we have right now there are some um there

[1:42:02] Voice 13: there are some decisions that we could make that are that are going to be win-wins irrespective of

[1:42:10] Voice 13: what our scenarios are. So whether we're wanting to put to ensure, maximize carbon sequestration,

[1:42:18] Voice 13: reduce fire risk, maximize biodiversity conservation, there are some clear parcels

[1:42:25] Voice 13: of land on the island that meet all of the objectives. Then there's other parcels that

[1:42:31] Voice 13: might meet, you know, one objective and not another. And I think that's where the scenario

[1:42:36] Voice 13: analysis becomes important and conversations with community is important but what we're seeing you

[1:42:43] Voice 13: know what I've seen having come back to the island almost 10 years ago now having been away for 20

[1:42:51] Voice 13: years is enormous amount of change there's enormous pressure and while we while we plan

[1:42:58] Voice 13: and while we think and while we collect more data land is being cleared and and so I think we

[1:43:05] Voice 13: as we want to have, you know, we want to have sort of a dynamic process, we should have some

[1:43:11] Voice 13: dynamic decision making where there are some things that we can do right now, based on what

[1:43:16] Voice 13: we know right now. And then there's other things that might take a bit more time. So I just urge,

[1:43:22] Voice 13: I, you know, I love collecting data, I love building models, I love, that's what I do. But I

[1:43:35] Voice 13: that serve all of these values that we agree on protected before they before we lose that

[1:43:43] Voice 13: opportunity.

[1:43:46] Trustee Luckham: Thank you for that message, Tara. Ruth, over to you.

[1:43:51] Voice 10: Thank you. Yes. And so just

[1:43:54] Voice 10: continuing on where Tara left off, what I what I will share is what my experience has been in doing

[1:44:02] Voice 10: doing three site visits with Mitchell, Susan, and Brandon Bauer, a permaculturalist on Island.

[1:44:10] Voice 10: And I think the education side is really important. And this anecdote will make that clear. We show up

[1:44:17] Voice 10: at people's properties who have a lot of forest that they're very concerned about. There was one

[1:44:23] Voice 10: on a slope where in 2018, a lot of trees had fallen. They weren't in contact with the ground.

[1:44:29] Voice 10: there was a lot of broken branches on the ground and the first the first visit was just Susan and

[1:44:35] Voice 10: myself and the homeowner the property owner was very tense and concerned about the fire risk

[1:44:41] Voice 10: presented by the forest and then we came back with the whole team and we walked through and she was

[1:44:47] Voice 10: very anxious what do I have to do I'm at really high fire risk it's an overwhelming amount of

[1:44:50] Voice 10: work is it safe to build my home here and as we walked through and she understood you could see

[1:44:58] Voice 10: her posture changing she became more relaxed and by the end she was so grateful and is implementing

[1:45:05] Voice 10: um has has hired a land uh someone to help her manage her land to implement the ideas that came

[1:45:12] Voice 10: up from this walkthrough we then did two others and i observed exactly the same thing that they

[1:45:17] Voice 10: the the property the property owner was tense and then as they understand and they can see

[1:45:24] Voice 10: from Mitchell here are the zones and here's what you do in these different zones and it became

[1:45:28] Voice 10: clear what needed to happen and that the forests were were helpful and that fire is natural what's

[1:45:34] Voice 10: not natural is how we've been managing it and and the current condition some of it is that

[1:45:39] Voice 10: they just the posture that these people relax so then to come back to I agree I think policy needs

[1:45:47] Voice 10: to have something that it can act on and so you know what Tara's saying is there's something that

[1:45:51] Voice 10: can be done now and there's more that can be done as we learn more and i i really would advocate for

[1:45:57] Voice 10: an expert workshop i've you know um i've i've asked for support and partnership with the uh

[1:46:04] Voice 10: with the local trust on this one that we have a fire expert workshop we bring in experts um to

[1:46:11] Voice 10: discuss treatments and what we can do and the big part of that is education that as we learn

[1:46:17] Voice 10: we share it in the community so that people start to understand the watershed you know coming back

[1:46:23] Voice 10: to what we did with transition we asked people what watershed they're in they don't know and

[1:46:27] Voice 10: they don't know the name and then once they start to understand ah here here i am and here's why

[1:46:32] Voice 10: they're doing this so it can help to explain the policy choices that the trust decides on to protect

[1:46:39] Voice 10: the Coastal Douglas fir and it can also reassure them about fire and water protection, water

[1:46:48] Voice 10: sustainability at the same time. So I see those as being step in step and really important for

[1:46:55] Voice 10: the community to no longer be afraid and also to be afraid of the correct thing. So I'll stop there,

[1:47:03] Voice 10: but I think this is a great conversation.

[1:47:06] Trustee Luckham: All right. Thank you, Ruth. And Jason,

[1:47:09] Trustee Luckham: let's write that down fire expert workshop that sounds like a really good idea yeah fire expert

[1:47:15] Trustee Luckham: over to you sorry

[1:47:17] Voice 18: can i just say that chair the ltc asked that that be included in your budget

[1:47:20] Voice 18: for the upcoming fiscal year so it's well there

[1:47:22] Trustee Luckham: you go thank you mitchell over to you yeah so

[1:47:27] Voice 3: it's funny i'm chiming in on a lot of the same things that have already been said but

[1:47:31] Voice 3: they speak to me so much as well what um um dr hennan said about the idea of a dynamic rather

[1:47:39] Voice 3: rather than prescriptive approach,

[1:47:42] Voice 3: I think is really healthy.

[1:47:44] Voice 3: And that ties in with what Dr. Waldick was saying as well

[1:47:46] Voice 3: about this idea of education

[1:47:48] Voice 3: as I think being the cornerstone of it all.

[1:47:52] Voice 3: And a kind of humility that kind of goes

[1:47:55] Voice 3: with what William Schulbo was saying.

[1:47:58] Voice 3: I think we almost need to approach it more as students

[1:48:00] Voice 3: rather than as educators,

[1:48:02] Voice 3: that we're all here learning how to be stewards of this land.

[1:48:05] Voice 3: And I think that's kind of the approach

[1:48:07] Voice 3: that i would love to see encouraged um within the community is that we can um maybe provide

[1:48:13] Voice 3: more opportunities for learning and and for them to to um like i'd love to see a whole educational

[1:48:20] Voice 3: dpa by by the way when you spoke about the um the wildfire hazard dpa under chief arjuna george

[1:48:27] Voice 3: i was really the guy behind him going hey we need to do this chief so even though chief george might

[1:48:32] Voice 3: now be retiring you'll you'll still hear that voice uh it'll just be me pushing another chief

[1:48:38] Voice 3: um so i i really would love to see a huge focus on education that for for me for example the

[1:48:47] Voice 3: wildfire hazard dpa that i envision would be one where if somebody moves to the island maybe they

[1:48:53] Voice 3: come from another community they might not understand how how our forests work and the

[1:48:58] Voice 3: the responsibilities that come with living in a forest and that if they moved here maybe as a

[1:49:04] Voice 3: under a wildfire hazard dpa or a coastal douglas fir dpa they would be encouraged to learn more

[1:49:11] Voice 3: and and maybe there's you know some new mechanisms that we don't have yet that would enable them to

[1:49:17] Voice 3: understand more about forest ecology and fire ecology and how and hydrology and how to live

[1:49:24] Voice 3: harmoniously and safely within our environment. So that's my little chime in.

[1:49:31] Trustee Luckham: Thank you, Mitchell. So Bryony, you're next. I'll just note that we've got 10 minutes remaining,

[1:49:36] Trustee Luckham: and I would encourage anybody that hasn't spoken yet to please chime in. Let's hear

[1:49:42] Trustee Luckham: what you're deeply thinking about as this conversation unfolds. So over to you, Bryony.

[1:49:49] Voice 9: Oh, I'm happy

[1:49:51] Voice 1: to let someone else go.

[1:49:55] Trustee Luckham: Well, let's see.

[1:49:56] Trustee Luckham: Trustee Groh hasn't said anything for a while, and his hand's up.

[1:49:59] Trustee Luckham: Over to you.

[1:50:00] Trustee Grove: I've been listening and so impressed by what I hear, but I'm a pragmatist, and I'm the

[1:50:12] Trustee Grove: very opposite of a scientist, unfortunately.

[1:50:14] Trustee Grove: I should be a bit more scientific.

[1:50:16] Trustee Grove: So I want to know what we can do.

[1:50:19] Trustee Grove: I've heard a couple of times now saying that there are indeed things that we can do, but

[1:50:24] Trustee Grove: And I'd like to know what those are. Ruth, your idea of a workshop, I think, is excellent, and I gather that's been budgeted for. And yes, indeed, education is essential, and more of it is essential. But by the way, you're only talking to those who want to be educated.

[1:50:42] Trustee Grove: and unfortunately humans aren't necessarily that open to being educated um so we do need we do need

[1:50:51] Trustee Grove: more rules um and you know where the the loggers in our community keep asking the same question

[1:50:59] Trustee Grove: which is you know how big of a problem is this what is the percentage of uh of of forests on

[1:51:06] Trustee Grove: our island that's actually getting logged every year and they come up with extremely small

[1:51:10] Trustee Grove: percentages. I mean, I think it's something that we need to address. So the simple approach,

[1:51:19] Trustee Grove: I think, we need fire burning permits. And I don't see why we shouldn't require logging

[1:51:28] Trustee Grove: permits. And I don't mean for individual trees on our properties, or so there needs to be some

[1:51:34] Trustee Grove: kind of a volume before it clicks in. But I don't see why we shouldn't require permits.

[1:51:42] Trustee Grove: The purpose of the fire burning permit seems to me to be an educational one. We get told what we

[1:51:49] Trustee Grove: should do and what we shouldn't and I think that the logging permit could look much the same.

[1:51:57] Trustee Grove: We need to define clear cutting and what we think clear cutting means.

[1:52:05] Trustee Grove: So let's come up with some very specific things that we can do in order to protect our forests,

[1:52:15] Trustee Grove: which there's no doubt is essential for the well-being of our island and our people. Thank you.

[1:52:23] Trustee Luckham: Well, thank you, Trustee Grove. And just before I go to Brian, I'll just note,

[1:52:27] Trustee Luckham: Thank you for reminding us, Trustee Grove, that indeed the Allens Trust is in conversation with the province about what considerations might be given to the Allens Trust in terms of forestry practices.

[1:52:40] Trustee Luckham: And of course, it's not without saying that the province itself is also now reviewing its own legislation and its responsibilities associated with logging throughout the province.

[1:52:52] Trustee Luckham: And that conversation is ongoing and would be interesting to hear from the doctors and with respect to that, those conversations that are happening at the provincial level, not including the Allen's Trust, other than in a consultative role as other local governments and where the synergies are here that we might meet our objectives and meet the province's objectives and meet our community's objectives.

[1:53:20] Trustee Luckham: So, Bryony, over to you.

[1:53:22] Voice 1: i just i just wanted to suggest that um just continuing the group to have a policy discussion

[1:53:29] Voice 1: would be super useful i mean we've all had ideas but that hasn't been within our remit

[1:53:34] Voice 1: and if the trustees were to um give a go-ahead to continue the conversation i think it'd be

[1:53:41] Voice 1: super valuable um

[1:53:43] Trustee Luckham: well yeah absolutely yeah anybody else or anything else anybody that

[1:53:49] Trustee Luckham: hasn't spoken um brian your hand is still up oh sorry happy to have you continue also

[1:54:04] Voice 1: really briefly to ferpa the forest and range practices i think that um some of the

[1:54:11] Voice 1: conversations coming out of that could be somewhat relevant um because to the main point i think is

[1:54:20] Voice 1: really engaging uh the we've got a we've got douglas treaty nations we've got cowichan and

[1:54:29] Voice 1: process of treaty i think that they should be invited into these conversations if we're going to

[1:54:35] Voice 1: look at um what's happening with furpa then that is the first step because that's certainly the

[1:54:42] Voice 1: the recommendation that's coming out of of the province and you'll find that there are stewardship

[1:54:50] Voice 1: plans already in existence certainly you know with soundage leadership council developed marine

[1:54:55] Voice 1: stewardship plans but if they were invited to uh help us on our terrestrial stewardship plans i

[1:55:04] Voice 1: think that would be a useful and ethical and the right thing to do because it would address

[1:55:11] Voice 1: address very much everything we've been talking about too about understanding the the kind of

[1:55:16] Voice 1: subtlety of these you know if you want to look at what a geriatric ecosystem is it's it's a garden

[1:55:23] Voice 1: and um so and and if you look at wetland estuarine there those are gardens the sea

[1:55:30] Voice 1: they're gardens these were tended stewarded places one of the reasons that fire was controlled is

[1:55:36] Voice 1: because they were tended and stewarded and fire had evolved as it as a constant disturbance

[1:55:44] Voice 1: regime in that so i think that in the long term there is lots of potential in the short term

[1:55:51] Voice 1: i'm i'm agreeing with um uh trustee grove that there are some stop gap measures that we can take

[1:56:00] Voice 1: that coupled with education just to slow the rate but on the other hand we do have data about how

[1:56:07] Voice 1: much change occurs on a on an annual basis by the work that nicholas courtier did and it's if i look

[1:56:15] Voice 1: just even in the work that katherine you've been doing um with landowner outreach and you know

[1:56:23] Voice 1: we've just been working on a 120 hectare parcel, acre parcel rather, that was front and center,

[1:56:31] Voice 1: the bright green thing right on that slide that we look, that is now protected. That's adding a

[1:56:39] Voice 1: percentage right there to the protection and a key parcel. So I can't stress enough the work

[1:56:46] Voice 1: that Catherine's doing and to support that and to increase the landowner contact. I've been working

[1:56:53] Voice 1: with landowner contact programs for 30 years and they do work, but they need to be funded.

[1:57:01] Trustee Luckham: Okay, very good. Thank you. So with a couple of minutes remaining, I want to respect everybody's

[1:57:06] Trustee Luckham: time of allocating this space today and all of your busy schedules. I'd like to end on time. So

[1:57:12] Trustee Luckham: a couple of closing remarks would be awesome. And indeed, let's continue this work.

[1:57:18] Trustee Luckham: and also, and my battery is telling me it's going to fail any moment now, so that's timely.

[1:57:24] Trustee Luckham: Let's go to Ruth Waldach, and then William Shulbaugh might get the last word.

[1:57:29] Voice 10: Thank you. I just want to agree with what Bryony is suggesting, that this conversation is not done,

[1:57:37] Voice 10: and there are some things that can come out of it that are more concrete, and I would like to just

[1:57:42] Voice 10: add that in addition to continuing the conversation amongst ourselves, and also with some of the

[1:57:48] Voice 10: the First Nations in this region. I think also the staff of the Trust should be participating

[1:57:56] Voice 10: in this to direct the policy questions and let us respond directly to it and use the information

[1:58:02] Voice 10: in ways that are meaningful to them.

[1:58:05] Voice 2: Excellent. Thank you, Ruth.

[1:58:07] Voice 2: William Shoba, and then we'll wrap it up here. Thank

[1:58:10] Voice 14: you, Chair. Thank you, thank you,

[1:58:13] Voice 14: thank you, thank you to Dr. Martin and Riley for this great work. It allows a platform for

[1:58:21] Voice 14: conversation on these different types of data products that we're bringing together.

[1:58:27] Voice 14: And I'm really encouraged by that. And there should be an update to the recharge mapping

[1:58:34] Voice 14: for Salt Spring Island after this fiscal. So that's exciting. I just want to end off that I

[1:58:41] Voice 14: I agree wholeheartedly with Mitchell that like stewardship and education should be the front runner out of all the stuff rather than, you know, protect first and regulation.

[1:58:56] Voice 14: I think the more that we have voluntary compliance, that's how any of this is working anyway.

[1:59:00] Voice 14: way um and the more people understand how the ecosystems relate to fresh water and to fire risk

[1:59:08] Voice 14: and their day-to-day lives i think that's just the the the best thing that we can accomplish

[1:59:14] Voice 14: so thanks yeah thanks chair okay

[1:59:18] Trustee Luckham: thank you william so i want to thank everybody um for this

[1:59:21] Trustee Luckham: really uh great conversation and indeed echoing uh trustee patrick's words there about this great

[1:59:27] Trustee Luckham: opportunity to be in this learning sharing environment is incredibly stimulating and

[1:59:33] Trustee Luckham: indeed let's continue this work. Just a final remark is that it's interesting that we

[1:59:39] Trustee Luckham: often suggest that we want to invite First Nations to the table to have this conversation with us.

[1:59:45] Trustee Luckham: I think the other thing that we need to recognize is that we need to ask to be invited to their

[1:59:50] Trustee Luckham: conversations because um we tend to run with the ball that's our nature um but

[1:59:56] Trustee Luckham: indeed there's other conversations that's been pointed out that

[2:00:00] Trustee Luckham: We need to take the opportunity to listen to,

[2:00:01] Trustee Luckham: to come to a greater understanding,

[2:00:04] Trustee Luckham: to have our own learning on what's come before us.

[2:00:07] Trustee Luckham: So Tara, Martin, do you want to have a closing remark?

[2:00:12] Trustee Luckham: And then we'll all go about our days today.

[2:00:15] Trustee Luckham: Thank you, everybody.

[2:00:17] Voice 13: I just want to thank everyone for making space

[2:00:20] Voice 13: to have this really important conversation.

[2:00:22] Voice 13: And I'm excited about where this is heading.

[2:00:25] Voice 13: I think we've got an amazing team of heads

[2:00:30] Voice 13: to think about these issues, and Riley and I look forward to continuing to participate

[2:00:36] Voice 13: in any way that is deemed useful, so thank you.

[2:00:42] Trustee Luckham: Okay, so I'm here in Cowichan territory,

[2:00:47] Trustee Luckham: and so I want to say haichikatsiyem, raise my hands to you, and thanks for the sharing

[2:00:52] Trustee Luckham: and recognition of the place that we live in, and I look forward to seeing you all again,

[2:00:57] Trustee Luckham: So thank you, everybody,

[2:00:59] Voice 8: and have a great day.