200-year-old North Vancouver tree saved after weeks of protests

NORTH VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) — A massive cedar tree in North Vancouver is off the chopping block after community members rallied together to protest the removal.

Last month the 200-year-old Cedar was set to be chopped down to make room for redevelopment.

But weeks of protests and thousands of signatures on a petition paid off.

The site developer, Darwin Properties, announced Wednesday that the tree on the corner of 21st Street and Eastern Avenue will be preserved.

After hearing concerns from the community, Darwin properties sent an arborist to look over the tree, who determined it’s healthy with a wide and shallow root system.

The six-storey rental building slated for this area has been completely redesigned to accommodate the tree.

Oliver Webbe with the developers adds tree will be featured in the upcoming project, and to him, it will be a reminder of how communities can work together and be better by taking the time to listen to each other.”We had to completely redesign the building in order to make sure that the tree could stand. We also had to make sure that it was a healthy tree as well. So, we were spending several, several weeks just making sure that the plan that we did present and come forward with was going to keep that tree,” Webbe says.

The City of North Vancouver announced back in December it had signed leases and issued development permits to Darwin Properties and Sunrise Senior Living facility, as part of a plan to redevelop the Harry Jerome neighbourhood lands.

While preserving this Cedar is good news for the protesters, they say the city needs to do more to protect future trees from being chopped.

“Time is of the essence. Every single day we lose another tree, this has to be the last one,” Gabriel Hendry, a Save Our Cedar protester, says.