I attended the Evergreen Urban Biodiversity and Restoration panel tonight at UBC Robson Square in Vancouver.
It was sponsored by Evergreen.
The main speaker was Mike Houck, Director, Urban Green Spaces Institute and a naturalist with the Audubon Society of Portland. He talked about creating coalitions between groups to protect and enhance urban nature. He was a very dynamic and interesting speaker.
By changing city planning etc., the population of Portland grew by 31% from 1990-2000, yet land use increased only 3%. Houck talked about the importance of mapping, and how people love to see where they live in relation to pockets of nature on maps. Some of the groups he works with have developed databases of where concerned people live, so that they can call up hundreds of bodies for specific city/county hearings -- a neat idea. He said getting different NGOs trusting each other and working together (say housing + environmental) had a huge impact on elected officials who usually try to turn groups against each other.
Houck also mentioned how for decades the Portland Parks Department had basically viewed everything as recreation, yet it recently created an Ecosystem Management division.
A few related sites:
FAUNA, Friends and Advocates of Urban Natural Areas
Coalition for a Sustainable Future
Other speakers included Susan Haid from the GVRD who spoke about its
Biodiversity Conservation Strategy
And Patrick Lucey of Aqua-Tex Scientific Consulting who spoke about urban stream assessment and restoration, and stormwater management.
All of the speakers were very good, including Denise Philippe from Evergreen.
There was not much time for comments/questions from the audience, and unfortunately several of those who did get to speak were of the "doom and gloom" sort, seething with barely controlled rage. C'mon people, lighten up!