Trees have been bulldozed, money has been made and controversy is boiling on the UNB Wood lot. A public discussion was held last Thursday to talk about the fate of the big patch of trees.

“If we allow Fredericton to be flattened and paved and turned into a giant strip mall, then we might as well be living in Edmonton. At least Alberta’s got jobs that pay more then Home Depot and Wal-Mart do,” said Ross Ferguson. He is a board member of the Friends of the UNB wood lot, the organization that held the meeting.

“We … are asking the University of New Brunswick to place a moratorium on development until extensive, meaningful public participation takes place to decide the future of our urban forest,” he added.

About 70 people showed up to the meeting in the St. Thomas University Conference Centre.

The wood lot is Atlantic Canada’s largest urban forest. It contains 34 per cent of Fredericton’s tree cover. Half of the property is slated for development. The other half is reserved for conservation.

Alex Corey, a student at UNB, was in the audience. He had problems with the proposed conservation areas.

“The fifty per cent that they’re saving is mostly wetlands with a buffer around it. It’s not like they’re saving large areas that we can all walk in,” he said.

Dr. Graham Forbes is a forestry professor at UNB. He thinks the conservation areas could have been set up better. He is also critical of how the rest of the wood lot is being developed.

“I for one was hoping for corridors, but also cores. You know larger blocks (of conservation areas) … There are ways you can develop which are better for the environment. What we’ve seen so far is what’s typically called flat earth planning. You go in, level everything and plant a few trees afterward,” he said.

Development has already started. A road now runs through the wood lot, and a Home Depot has been built on the property near Corbett Brook Marsh. Recently there have been protests over the deaths of 24 beavers in the wood lot. They were killed, legally, to prevent damage to the newly made roads, culverts and bridges.

Mike Baldwin is the manager for real estate and planning at UNB. He says the university has worked hard to develop the wood lot properly.

“(The development) wasn’t something taken lightly. Our environmental consultants put a lot of thought into it. … They identified areas that most needed protection,” he said.

Baldwin said open meetings were held before the decision to develop was made.

“To be honest we had (those meetings) to hear opinions and constructive criticism … at that time in 04, 05, we didn’t hear that.”

Bob Seymour, a recreational user of the wood lot, was in the audience at the discussion. He was also at one of UNB’s public hearings in 2005.

“It was just a whitewash. There was no prior public notification about (the meeting). But the city seemed very keen on it. Three or four councillors around that committee were gung-ho to develop the wood lot, they couldn’t see that there could be any possible objection. I was the only person in the room that had any other point of view on it.”

Mat Fitzgerald works at the Environment and Sustainable Development Research Centre at UNB. He agrees that there were problems with public hearings.

“I think that most residents, no matter what developments are going up, feel that the consultation process is lacking,” he said.

He said the lack of objection at the consultation stage of the wood lot’s development was not the fault of the public.

“It’s your responsibility as a developer to make sure people become engaged,” he said.

Baldwin said the university chose to develop the wood lot because of the money it could generate.

“At the time the climate around education from a financial point of view was very challenging … (the wood lot) was an opportunity to help alleviate the fiscal environment and to do it in a balanced way.”

The Friends of the Wood Lot are doing several things to stop development. They are circulating a petition and are trying to start letter writing campaign. They also plan to take the university to court. They say the university broke the law by violating the wood lot’s land grant agreement. They say the agreement stipulates that the property can never be sold.

Before the meeting began, there was a sign on a table at the front of the room. It said, “this seat reserved for UNB administration.” No one from the UNB administration took the seat.