Editor:
The Port of Vancouver has been running ads inviting public participation in its new Land Use Plan amendments: landuse.plan@portvancouver.com.
This is commendable if one ignores the fact that public engagement with the Terminal 2 project on Roberts Bank, six years after the start of the environmental assessment, means building a massive manmade island in the Fraser delta ignoring its global significance for salmon, resident killer whales and migratory birds.
This is Canada’s top Important Bird Area (IBA) supporting the world’s entire population of western sandpipers’ annual migration from Mexico to Alaska.
The Fraser delta’s mud flats where the port wants to build Terminal 2 supports biofilm which the western sandpiper needs to survive their migration to Alaska. A sandpiper’s curved bill enables it to scoop up the life-giving biofilm on the wing.
Terminal 2 would annihilate an entire species so it is unfathomable and inexplicable that the port authority responsible for water and lands under its jurisdiction would run public television ads praising itself for its mandate to protect endangered species on port lands such as the little brown bat when it is advocating the extinction of an entire species of sandpipers.
Judy E. Williams
Co-Chair
Fraser River Coalition
This letter to the editor by Judy E. Williams originally appeared in the Delta Optimist on November 22, 2019.