Exaggerated and misleading claims in the CRD 2013 draft interim plan for Island View Beach Regional Park
The draft interim park plan put to the public in 2013 was riddled with exaggerated and misleading claims to a degree that must border on being a serious misrepresentation.
- There were misquotes about what other government bodies had said. The draft plan made three quotes from other government bodies, supposedly extolling the natural features of the park, but all those misquoted what was actually said. See the misquotes here.
- It made unsupported claims about species found in or near the park:
at Risk Act (SARA) including the contorted-pod evening primrose, the sand-verbena moth,
Howell’s triteleia, Streaked Horned Lark, and Edward’s Beach Moth.
But the Edwards Beach moth does not exist anywhere near the park despite searches for it, and it is considered extirpated. Multiple studies did not find Howell’s triteleia, in the park, not surprising as its habitat is Garry oak ecosystems of which there are none in the park. One researcher reported finding one plant on the Tsawout land in 2007, probably in the Garry Oak system at Banana Island, but no one has been able to find it again. And the Streaked Horned Lark, according to the Cordova Strategy, is "not currently known to occur or breed in Canada" !!
- It contained an "Ecosystems" map claiming that the bulk of the park is either a salt marsh or a brackish marsh, yet as anyone who has walked this area knows, this is not the case, and probably has not been for hundreds or even thousands of years. See a description of the natural ecosystem here.
- Was written in a manner intended to make the reader believe the Tsawout had set aside 100+ acres of green space north of the park, which they had not. See Tsawout green space
- Contained an appendix marked: APPENDIX 2 Select Species Identified at Island View Beach but what were shown were species and "potential species" from very much wider areas. This was grossly misleading. See Select Species