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Our future looks bleak

Editor: Re: ‘Eagle trees’ toppled for public safety, May 21.
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Letter-writer Elizabeth McLoughlin took this photo after trees came down.

Editor:

Re: ‘Eagle trees’ toppled for public safety, May 21.

I stood and cried Friday, as I watched five healthy, magnificent fir trees be removed from the hillside on Victoria Avenue.

I stood, along with others, as the eagles circled above them, wondering where their homes were going. I am left thinking, “what is the point?”

I have never felt compelled to write a letter to the editor, but some things just get to you. I am deeply disappointed for our community that there was no bargaining point that this developer would agree to. Council tried; staff tried; neighbours tried. I shake my head and ask why.

I love my White Rock, and today I am deeply saddened for us and for the generations to follow.

Coun. Helen Fathers, White Rock

• • •

Monday night, I stopped by this Victoria Street lot and found neighbour Sandy MacNamee, very sad and frustrated guardian of the town’s Eagle-perch trees, with her lovely springer spaniel, Polly.

I’m told this property’s municipal easement contained a large percentage of White Rock’s nearly disappeared eagle habitat. I wonder how much view would have been lost by moving construction forward, by the depth of that easement?

Do we have to have to take it all?

I see here the sad evidence of how we value ourselves above the delicate balances present in the natural world; rather than mediating our wants and needs, in respect to the delicate health of Earth’s ecosystem, we pave a piece of paradise and deliver this present evidence of our grandchildren’s most meaningful future in White Rock – no eagles in their daily lives, as we cherish now.

Elizabeth McLoughlin, White Rock