The following letter was addressed to Bowen Island Municipality’s mayor and council and shared with the Undercurrent.
I was quite frankly appalled and flabbergasted to read the September 20, 2021 letter from Robert van der Zalm re. a decision on what is planned for the Mount Gardner Recreation Site. I am asking you, as our elected Council, to re-emphasize in a letter to the Minister of Forests, Land, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development, that Bowen Island does not want motorized access on Mount Gardner.
The Council has already sent a letter, asking the Province to prohibit motorized access on Mount Gardner. Please send one again and ask why your directions/recommendations to the Province are being totally ignored. I know the letter of September 20, 2021 was somewhat confusing and that Council seemed to be confused about it when you discussed at Council. What is not confusing are the two final paragraphs:
Restricting all motorized use in the recreation site has a high risk of creating conflict and discord amongst historical users, with a low likelihood of success of preventing motorized use in the area.
Restricting motorized use would require a level of enforcement that is not currently available. Without an effective enforcement plan, making regulatory change on its own is not justifiable.
Two points:
1) “Making regulatory change” – since when was there a regulation permitting motorized access; there has never been one.
2) Avoiding regulating an activity because of level of enforcement would mean that most of our Bowen bylaws would be pointless.
In addition, if the Province wishes to avoid “creating conflict and discord amongst historical users” – which have in my 55 years plus experience of hiking Mount Gardner trails – been confined to hikers and more recently some mountain bikers – only in last ten years have motorized vehicles raised their ugly heads on Mt. Gardner. How do they get to call themselves “historical users.” There will be much conflict and discord if this poorly conceived response to community opposition is ignored.
As for enforcement, I have no doubt that there would be many volunteers stepping forward to report to the municipality and/or to the Province when the “no motorized access” is not being respected. At the moment, the trail riders group happily posts their videos of Mount Gardner motorized trail riding. How difficult would it be to follow up when these are posted and remind the offenders that this is not allowed?
Thank you for standing up to the Province on this issue.
Nerys Poole
