Burns Bog, September 11 2005

As promised, the view of Burns Bog from Boundary Bay...

At this point, the fire had been raging for about six or so hours and the fire fighters had backed down for the night. This morning, the prospects of a speedy end to the blaze are looking slim, with huge plumes of smoke continuing to rise from the Bog.

While I was looking up information on the Bog, I was outraged when I discovered that only about 60 hectares of the 4000 hectare Bog had been preserved (at the time of writing of the site I was reading), with the rest being the site of a City dump (shame on you, Vancouver!) or in the hands of a development company intent of spoiling it for any number of projects...

When are we going to learn that places like peat bogs cannot be replaced once they're gone, and have inherent value while they're around? And, when I'm talking about value, I'm not just referring to the fact that they are home to countless rare and endangered species (although, it is worth pointing out that at least some of those are predators of mosquitoes that can spread West Nile Virus). Peat bogs are incredible water filters, retaining excess nutrients and chemicals including, amazingly enough, mercury!

Grrrrr...

Burns Bog, September 11 2005 originally uploaded by megarhyssa.