Harbour should focus on marine wildlife

Re: “Optimize lively public waterfronts around Victoria’s Inner Harbour,” comment, Sept. 16.

If we want to “optimize” the seafront at Ship Point, near the Johnson Street Bridge and even at Laurel Point, let’s consider, celebrate and highlight our unusual, marine, urban wildlife and decades of deindustrialization, restoration, cleanups and re-wilding. Indeed, Victoria Harbour has valuable wildlife and amazing restoration stories of national interest.

Victoria Harbour is part of a historic migratory bird sanctuary (est. Oct. 27, 1923), the oldest in Pacific Canada, recently recognized as a NatureHood by Nature Canada. A NatureHood is a great place for urbanites to connect with “nearby nature.” Victoria Harbour is alive with Pacific great blue herons, bald eagles, buffleheads, western purple martins, coho salmon, pacific herring, cutthroat trout, marine river otters, Pacific harbour seals, the occasional orcas and large beds of clams, among others.

Optimization should lead to more enhancements, better shores for wildlife, highlighting of features to the public, and even dealing with pollution and nuisance created by species such as glaucous-winged gulls nesting on roofs of buildings in the city.

Biodiversity and clean waters are key ingredients if we seek to optimize urban renewal and sustainability in Victoria Harbour and the capital city of British Columbia.

Jacques Sirois chair, Friends of Victoria Harbour Migratory Bird Sanctuary