Saturday, May 1, 2010

An Open Letter to Delta, BC Mayor Jackson

Mayor Jackson:

I have had the chance to see your lovely website www.burnsbog.ca.

What I don't understand is why the Burns Bog Conservation Society is not mentioned anywhere on the site.

The bog would have been developed if it wasn't for a group of concerned citizens that stopped it and fought for the governments to purchase it. This group of people became the Burns Bog Conservation Society. It is also the Society that built the board walk that goes through the Delta Nature Reserve and maintains it (along with other things in the park) with out any funding from the Corporation of Delta. The funding comes from outside grants and donations.

When I saw this website, it made me feel that you as the Corporation of Delta made it all possible. In your chronology of events there is not mention even of the group of concerned citizens that fought for it prior to 1988, nor the mention that it was the Burns Bog Conservation Society that invited Dr. David Bellamy in 1995 to come to the bog and he advises that it needs to be saved.

I must admit that I currently work for the Society. But until I started working with them, I didn’t realize how much work volunteers like Eliza Olson, Wally Davyduke and many others (too many to name) have done for Burns Bog. Not only countless hours of their time, but moneywise too, so everyone can cantinue to enjoy the bog and see why the bog is so valuable to us.

Burns Bog Conservation Society continuously is educating members of the government/politictions and the public on the importance of the bog through tours and presentations. But there is no mention of this on your website.

You must credit the Society on this website, or you will continue to mislead people to believe that you alone have done such wonderful things for the “Lungs of the Lowermainland”.


Sincerely,
Sonia Nazar