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Council adopts new Heron policy and construction of tourist gazebo moves ahead

Year eighteen of heron nesting season in Snug Cove is underway, and as Senior Bylaw Officer Bonny Brokenshire told council last week, Bylaw Services has yet again received numerous inquiries about activities that may or may not contravene the municip
herons
Herons in cherry blossoms taken March 2015.

Year eighteen of heron nesting season in Snug Cove is underway, and as Senior Bylaw Officer Bonny Brokenshire told council last week, Bylaw Services has yet again received numerous inquiries about activities that may or may not contravene the municipality’s heron nesting policy. Pacific Great Blue Herons (Ardea herodias fannini), are considered a species of “Special Concern” under the Species at Risk Act, and are protected under Federal, Provincial Law. Brokenshire outlined three particular activities that have come up as points of concern, and following her presentation, a fourth - the planned construction of a tourist gazebo on the pier – was raised by members of council. The conversation that followed ended with two new municipal heron policy’s being passed, the second of which allowed the gazebo’s construction to move forward this past weekend.

The activities of concern that Brokenshire raised in her presentation were the Green Man Festival, the mowing of the library lawn and a request to move the Rotary Stage for the Steamship Days Festival to the area of Crippen Park across the street from Tuscany Restaurant. On the first concern, Brokenshire said the Festival organizers decided to move the majority of their activities to the Union Steamship Lawn. On the second concern, Brokenshire says that Metro Vancouver has come up with a protocol to allow the library lawn to be mowed without disrupting the herons. On the third point of concern, Brokenshire said such a decision would be up to Metro Vancouver as the move would impact their land.

Towards the end of her presentation, Brokenshire suggested that in order to move public understanding forward on this issue, the municipality might consider revising the Heron policy (written in 2001) or creating a Bowen Island “heron fact sheet” similar to the provincial one that already exists.

Mayor Murray Skeels responded skeptically to this suggestion.

“If you’re going to have herons in the middle of downtown, it doesn’t matter how much you write. People are going to say, this is crazy,” said Skeels. “And you’re going to say yes it is, welcome to Bowen Island. The last council went through a lot on this in trying to expand the library parking lot, but then nobody could park there during heron season. You can try it, is my perspective, if someone wants to take another shot but it is what it is. They rule us.”
Councilor Alison Morse added that at the very least, the spelling mistakes should be fixed within the policy, which is poorly written and lacks clarity.

“It’s written as an information notice, it should be written in the format a policy,” said Morse. “It’s full of typos, it doesn’t make sense and it should only have the reference to contacting the bylaw officer with respect to questions. It also refers to something that’s attached, that isn’t attached, and on the other side of this notice there’s an article that appeared in the Undercurrent and that I think added a little more detail. So, the policy as it’s written, we might as well just get rid of it because it’s really not helpful to people.”

When Municipal Chief Administrative Officer suggested that rescinding the policy would leave Bowen Island to be bound by Provincial regulations, which are more restrictive, Morse clarified that she never meant to say that the policy should be rescinded.

Other council members agreed that the policy requires “cleaning-up” and, suggested manners of clarification.

Following her comments on the matter, councillor Maureen Nicholson brought up the issue of the tourism kiosk planned for the pier.

“I don’t know where that stands in terms of proceeding, but the question about the moving of the Rotary Stage to the area in front of Tuscany, when I was thinking about that in terms of this policy, the most sensitive time is from February 1 until March 1. And Steamship Days is July 10th – 12th which is four months after the end of the sensitive period...”

Nicholson said that addressing the heron policy does in fact fit in with the priorities outlined in council’s Strategic Plan in terms of improving Snug Cove because currently, “everything is put on hold until September or October.”

“I am not speaking against the heron policy because I understand the importance of that,” said Nicholson. “What I am speaking against is the perception that we can’t do anything for nine months of the year because we have a heron policy.”

Nicholson then pointed to a suggestion made by Sue Ellen Fast, that the municipality should be making use of a biologist to outline what projects can happen, and when.

After some discussion about whether a project should simply proceed once a heron nest appears vacant, council agreed by way of a vote that a biologist should be hired in order to survey the heron situation in the context of any given proposal in the Cove, and that similarly, a biologist should be hired to review and clarify that heron nesting policy.

With this decision made, Bowen Island environmental specialist Alan Whitehead was brought in to survey the area around the pier. After determining that the herons had moved to the North Side of the lagoon, Whitehead gave a work crew permission to start the construction of the kiosk.

Heron nests, 2015
Councillor Sue Ellen Fast has kept track of islanders’ sightings of herons nest for Bowen through Bowen Heron Watch. She says this year, there are four active nests in the lagoon area. If anyone spots a heron nest, they should contact her at sefast@shaw.ca However she asks people not to approach a nest as the mother may abandon her eggs.