Director of Forestry, Danielle Hanek says the government is clamping down on illegal land clearing.
Hanek told ZNS News that the main issue is unregulated development. This includes “persons not getting permits for clearing areas that have protected trees on them, having certificate of environmental clearance, not having those when their doing their building permits. And so it is a part of the permitting process. So you have unregulated development or you have just this pressure of these uses houses is a pressure, infrastructure is a pressure, also agriculture is a pressure too. So you have to balance these uses, these land uses, in terms of what is sustainable what isn’t. So when we review persons cases is that to say, okay, here are recommendations, how they can mitigate the effort or the damage they’re doing to the environment. So that can impact the area with increased flooding for example or in terms of air quality, all of those are small factors that impact or hinder our quality of life.”
The Forestry Director appealed to the public saying, “plant a tree and know its a protected resource and also just valuing our environment. So if you have to remove a tree know that their are other measures the you can use to balance what you’re doing.”
