DG Group’s wetland destruction application fails “Conservation of Land” test

From Jack Gibbons, North Gwillimbury Forest Alliance

DG Group’s bid to cut down close to 32,000 trees and destroy more than 100 acres of wetland and woodlands on its Maple Lake Estates property to build a mobile home park clearly cannot pass any reasonable test of ecological stewardship. The Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority (LSRCA) should waste no time in dismissing this preposterous application.

It doesn’t inspire confidence that the DG Group’s consultant’s report is rife with errors, from an incomplete listing of species at risk to a failure to understand that DG Group’s development plan requires it to construct at least a 9-hole golf course as part of the first phase of its development.

And its attempts to dismiss the ecological importance of the property are laughable in the context of a Southern Ontario landscape where 70% of pre-European settlement wetlands have now disappeared. The suggestion that ditches and stormwater ponds can somehow fill the same functions as natural wetlands is equally absurd.

What the report does clarify is that there is actually more wetland on the property than previously estimated, meaning that more than 95% of the property is either within or immediately adjacent to wetland areas, which should be off-limits for development.

In the jargon of professional planners, the application fails to pass the “Conservation of Land” test required for the issuance of a Section 28 permit.

Nevertheless, the DG Group’s consultants would like us to believe that the DG Group should be allowed to purchase the right to destroy these provincially significant wetlands and woodlands by sending a cheque to the LSRCA to pay for the planting of 9,571 trees in some other unspecified location.

The LSRCA needs to act with integrity and immediately tell DG Group that its plan is a complete non-starter and that there will be no Section 28 permit. We simply cannot afford to trade a natural area this valuable for a promise of a cheque in the mail.

To read our planning consultant’s review of the DG Group’s application, please click here.

To view the DG Group’s application, please click here.