Advocacy Activities

GOMPS advocates for individual Garry oak and Garry oak ecosystem protection and stewardship through letters of support to government bodies, presentations to community groups, planting and community events, and is involved in several projects, such as restoration work, LiDAR, Mapping, and related communications to support informed decision-making about Garry oak ecosystem preservation and protection. 

Projects

Letters of Support

Recent letters of support are listed here. Please consult our newsletter and President’s Report archives for older material.

Advocacy Contributions

Presentations

News Media

Guidance for Advocacy

BC has a rich history of citizens advocating to save natural ecosystems. Saving the great forests of BC–South Moresby and Clayoquot Sound–became flagship campaigns waged by First Nations, conservation organizations, and grass roots activists from the 1980s through to today.  Even in the early years of colonization, there was public engagement and pleas for conservation when Garry oak trees, valued for their esthetics and native landscape appeal, were felled in the pursuit of urban growth. The 1990s saw a growing awareness that not just the trees but the ecosystem in which they were the keystone species needed protection. GOMPS emerged in 1992 in response to those concerns. As Matt Cavers suggests in his article “Victoria’s Own Oak Tree”: A Brief Cultural History of Victoria’s Garry Oaks After 1843, “Whatever else the Garry oaks have been, I suggest that they have been best known because they are disappearing.”

Source
Cavers, Matt. BC Studies, No. 163 (Autumn 2009) “Victoria’s Own Oak Tree”: A Brief Cultural History of Victoria’s Garry Oaks After 1843. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/bcstudies/article/view/280

The tools that government grants its citizens are the best protections against loss of Garry oaks and their ecosystems in the face of development pressures. It is, therefore, very important to ensure that city staff and elected municipal council members, as well as elected members of the Legislature and of Parliament hear from citizens about the importance of enacting and enforcing effective regulatory tools to protect and preserve Garry oak trees and Garry oak ecosystems across their range. 

Community Trees Matter Network is a coalition of people who value urban trees and want to work with regional municipal authorities to ensure more is done to protect, preserve, and plant and maintain trees to ensure they survive and thrive. This hub serves to inform, educate and champion advocacy for trees at risk of being removed. 

Their Standing Up For Trees toolkit is an invaluable resource for effective advocacy: https://creativelyunited.org/community-trees-matter-network/toolkit/standing-up-for-trees/

GOERT also provides some excellent resources for advocating in the face of development. https://goert.ca/wp/wp-content/uploads/GOERT-Protecting-During-Land-Development-2007.pdf

We invite you to reach out to GOMPS through our Contact Us page when developments in your neighbourhood threaten to remove Garry oaks from our urban forest. Please provide details about what is proposed and the impacts you anticipate so that we can assess what advocacy action we may be able to take in addition to your own actions.