Bear Mountain Tree Sit: Six Months Behind Schedule

August 14, 2008 - Word on the street says Bear Mountain Resort condo sales have plummeted to zero in the past three months and new tower construction has been abandoned. Construction of the Bear Mountain Interchange is now six months behind schedule, a situation that people warned could happen when they met with City of Langford staff in August 2007. The delay appears to be the result of problems securing funds for the project without driving the city in unmanageable debt.

Mayor Stew Young repeatedly promised that "the developers would pay all of the cost," but the city is now reduced to issuing an unsecured letter of credit, scaling construction back dramatically and postponing portions of the interchange. Below is the original construction schedule, issued in October 2007.

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The tree sitters and the Boycott Bare Mountain campaign can't take all the credit for this fiasco. Poor financial planning, massive community opposition, the US foreclosure crisis and the price of gas all contributed as well. No doubt those who promoted this project thought they could bully their way to success. Not turning out that well, is it? Well, we told you so.

Bear Mountain: Stop the Madness!

"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." Mahatma Gandhi

The more we look into the Bear Mountain resort and interchange development near Victoria, BC, the more we see that those pushing the project are determined to bulldoze rare ecosystems, First Nations heritage sites, and people's democratic rights in order to profit from expensive condos and overpriced real estate. But will they get away with it?

Developers and public officials completely failed to protect First Nations heritage sites in the area of Skirt (Spaet) Mountain in Langford. One sacred cave was destroyed by blasting and excavation in 2006, and a second may face the same fate in the coming weeks. City of Langford workers welded a steel grate over the entrance to Langford Lake Cave in February 2008 and then dumped several tons of boulders onto the grate. Dozens of culturally modified trees were cut down around the cave, which a Songhees Nation elder has named as a place of cultural significance. The interchange route will apparently intersect the 80-meter-long cavern, and blasting could begin at any time.

Garry oak ecosystems - the rarest forests in BC - have been mowed down and bulldozed, destroying the oaks, camas flower meadows, and related plant life on the rocky bluffs and plateaus of Skirt Mountain. The City of Langford maintains that protection plans and studies on rare mammals, amphibians, and reptiles in the area are not needed. Ponds and wetlands on and around the mountain are home to pacific tree frogs, red-legged frogs, great horned owls, screech owls, pileated woodpeckers, and dozens of other species that deserve protection.

Meanwhile, Langford city council has maneuvered to shut voters out of the approval process on a $25 million loan to finance the interchange. This comes after the city refused to dialogue or consult with concerned citizens and groups who requested meetings, sent letters, and made submissions to council for over two years. More than two thousand residents signed a petition in January urging council to reconsider the borrowing bylaws, and still the city refuses to acknowledge the issue. The province has likewise turned a deaf ear to voters while kicking in $5 million and leaving taxpayers on the hook for the rest of the bill if the developers default. A persistent aura of corruption and conflict of interest hangs over the project, which is aggressively promoted by Langford councillors.

Those who oppose the development face a level of retaliation rarely seen in North America. A small peace camp set up in the path of the interchange was evicted in February by dozens of heavily armed RCMP officers pointing assault rifles. Over a hundred officers patrolled a kilometer-wide exclusion zone near the Trans-Canada highway for three days while feller-bunchers clearcut the forest. Shortly after, Langford mayor Stewart Young declared he would try to recover the cost of the police operation by suing the campers. On February 29, project manager Les Bjola helped organize a "goon squad" of 200 construction contract-ors that descended on a small rally on the highway, assaulting several people, destroying signs and banners, and threatening those speaking out against the destruction.

The lack of any assessments of the delicate karst (limestone) geology and watercourse hydrology in the area may leave the new interchange subject to collapse, sinkholes, and widespread watershed contamination due to runoff. Sewage, silt, and chemicals from the new development are already filtering into streams that flow down Skirt Mountain into Florence Lake and Langford Lake.

Challenging this aggressive development on Vancouver Island has created a grassroots network that covers half the province, and future developments will never be the same. We are grateful to everyone who's given their energy to this campaign.

Why We're Defending Langford Cave

Indigenous people have used Langford Cave for spiritual practice for generations. We know the cave has a name in the Songhees language. Because this kind of knowledge is closely guarded by the elders, outsiders are not permitted to know the name of the cave. But dozens of people - both native and non-native - camping and visiting the site have been touched by the spirit of the place. The diversity of birds, medicinal plants, mosses and cave-dwelling insects is astonishing. We are determined to protect this unique cave and the ecosystem that surrounds it by all peaceful means.

Wildlife, caves and First Nations cultural sites, or greed and unethical development?

We are taking to the trees to stop a huge development project, including a new highway, that would destroy mature forests, watersheds, rare caves, traditional indigenous sites and wildlife near Victoria, BC. Bear Mountain is the name given to the place by the developers of Bear Mountain Resort and Properties. The city of Langford named it Skirt Mountain, and the Songhees Nation name is Spaet, which means "bear."

The following summary can be found on the excellent and well-researched website First Nations: Land Rights and Environmentalism in BC.

Until 2001 much of SPAET Mountain was classified as a "Forest Lands Reserve" (Crown land owned by the public). The behind-the - scenes sale of this land adds up to a form of political corruption. Corporate profit from hastily planned development schemes in this area depend on a new road infrastructure financed by public funds such as the $30 million Bear Mountain Interchange on the Trans Canada Highway (1). To connect to it, two roads are being constructed: the Savory Road Connector and the Bear Mountain Parkway. Both roads bisect forests buffering Goldstream Park, a much loved nature attraction, further diminishing its fragile and already endangered ecology.

The infrastructure for Bear Mountain Resort includes the Malahat Corridor, promoted as an alternative to Malahat Drive. The new highway will carve SPAET Mountain in two and cross over Saanich Inlet, giving city commuters direct access to the new development scheme at Bamberton. BC's gung-ho Ministry of Transportation has partnered with Stantec, the engineering empire that paved over most of Edmonton, Alberta.

SPAET Mountain is being destroyed by a clandestine land grab. In 2001 the BC government transfered 44 hectares of land to Western Forest Products for the giveaway price of $1.05 million. Within six months the land was sold to the Bear Mountain Resort developer for the same price and zoning regulations were altered, courtesy of the local pro-business mayor. The result is the cancer-like urban sprawl of golf courses, residential subdivisions, roads, hotels and strip malls. All this can be easily observed by anyone using Google Earth satellite and mapping technology.

The corruption surrounding the SPAET Mountain land grab involves big business and elected officials eager to make a quick buck. Community and environmental issues such as municipal water supply, pollution from golf courses and sewage, changes to the fragile watershed hydrology, public transport infrastructure, etc. have not been addressed. Bears and other large wild animals have no place to go as their mountainside habitat disappears. Bear Mountain Resort has already killed one resident "problem" bear and there are certainly other unreported instances.

Six Months Behind Schedule

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Public Opinion Report Now Available Online

Tripod over the cave

Bear Mountain: Stop the Madness!

Why We're Defending Langford Cave

All about wildlife, sacred caves, & big development (pdf)

Langford Cave Photo Essay, Maps and More

Wildlife, caves and First Nations cultural sites, or greed and unethical development?

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