Burns Bog land was lost ‘due to deceit’

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• COLUMN: No more dumping at Burns Bog dump
• No roads in the bog

The property MK Delta Lands wishes to develop is not “adjacent to Burns Bog,” nor “near Burns Bog.”  It’s “a remnant peripheral portion of Burns Bog,” according to the company’s own report submitted to Delta.

It’s part of the eastern, and higher, of the two peat-filled water mounds which comprise Burns Bog.

The water which runs off the slopes of this wonderful bit of wildland pours underneath Highway 91 in culverts, and then deep into the ecological reserve, through historic ditches, before flowing northward through the reserve to the Fraser

In my many years of tramping through this beloved and unique portion of Burns Bog, I’ve found it to be well-frequented by bears, deer, coyotes, eagles, likely-nesting great-horned owls, nesting red-tailed hawks, and a rich assortment of often-nesting songbirds. It consists of a remarkably diverse, radically changing series of north-south running strips of vegetation, each supportive of a different assemblage of plants and animals. This includes special groups of ancient, massive spruce and cedars in rich, mucky, black swamp forest soil.

Most importantly, this land contains the natural, southerly course of Cougar Creek, to which this stream happily returns many times a year when it rains hard long enough. It’s salmon habitat which must be fully restored.

This land, and all other portions of Burns Bog now held by MK Delta, were awarded to government in a court order until the lawyer for the provincial Liberal government told the judge the province did not want them, and a lawyer for one of the owners told the judge the presently excluded lands had no ecological value whatsoever.

We must undo this misdeed and re-acquire these lands we lost due to deceit. If those in office will not do so, we must replace them, as we have had to many times already to get what we wanted done in the bog.

Don DeMille

Delta