GOMPS – Community Association of Oak Bay. Thursday, February 12, 2026, at 7:00 pm. Zoom and in person. Monterey Recreation Centre, Bamboo Room. Oak Bay Talks presents: Exploring Our National Treasure: The State of the Garry Oak Ecosystems in Greater Victoria. Ryan Senechal and Carollyne Yardley, Garry Oak Meadow Preservation Society, on the historic significance of the Garry oak ecosystems, the critical services they provide, current policies, gaps in protection, and how GOMPS is responding to Garry oak loss in urban areas. Links Community Association of Oak Bay https://www.oakbaycommunityassociation.org Garry Oak Meadow Preservation Society https://www.garryoak.info
GOMPS Presentations
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Ryan Senechal. Remote Sensing: Garry Oak Species Detection Update, GOMPS AGM, Nov 2025
GOMPS and Terra Remote Sensing flew to capture LiDAR/ortho on June 24th, 2025
Table of Contents:What for and why now?
Why GOMPS?
Why LiDAR?
Why Victoria and Saanich UCB?
Project Specifications
Goals
What’s Next? -
Jacklyn Jolicoeur. GOMPS Introduction to Greater Victoria NatureHood, Nov 2025.
On November 24, 2025, GOMPS Director Jacklyn Jolicoeur presented to the Greater Victoria NatureHood, a collaborative effort by several not-for-profit, public and private organizations. A list of the partners appears below. Representatives from Nature Canada and Canadian Wildlife Service serve as advisors to the partners.
GOMPS is now a proud member, and will join the conversation through collaboration in the Greater Victoria region.
Presentation slides: -
Ryan Senechal. Remote Sensing: Garry Oak Species Detection Project, GOMPS AGM, Nov 2024.
The Remote Sensing: Garry Oak Species Detection Project is scheduled for June 2025.Garry Oak Meadow Preservation Society is a volunteer-run non-profit based in Saanich, BC providing advocacy functions around individual Garry oak and Garry oak ecosystem protection and stewardship. Mapping and analysis of the overall Garry oak ecosystem and individual trees in the Capital Regional District is out of date and utilizes methods that prevent cost-effective updates and efficient temporal analysis. Our interest is in developing a new approach to mapping Garry oak species presence using LiDAR and geoAI. By conducting species specific detection analysis to form a species composition baseline, we can enable future analysis opportunities that are Garry oak specific.
The Garry Oak Meadow Preservation Society (GOMPS) has partnered with Terra Remote Sensing, a geospatial data acquisition company, for an upcoming project. GOMPS is in interested in developing a new approach to map Garry oak species presence using LiDAR and machine learning. By conducting species specific detection analysis to form a species composition baseline, we can enable future analysis opportunities that are Garry oak and Garry oak ecosystem specific. This is an important contribution to a growing body of regional urban forest mapping that could influence changes in tree protection policies (e.g., enhanced existing tree protections and requirements for Garry oak replacement trees through private development), and management and planning for Garry oaks on public property.
GOMPS initial analysis goals are to perform Garry oak species detection within two municipalities (City of Victoria, and District of Saanich’s Urban Containment Boundary), and eventually expand the method to survey all municipalities in the Capital Regional District. GOMPS hopes to have located and calculated the overall Garry oak canopy area. The goal is to offer the Garry oak mapping and high-resolution raw LiDAR/ortho data flown for this project publicly. This data sharing will support researchers, community members and other nonprofit organizations with our Garry oak species analysis, and also enable additional novel data analysis approaches supporting Garry oaks and Garry oak ecosystems. LiDAR Species Detection flight window is set for the week of June 23, 2025.
Presentation Slides:
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Carollyne Yardley. VCAN Community Mapping Project, AGM Presentation, Nov 2024.
A conversation about the distribution of biodiversity within and between the City of Victoria’s neighbourhoods.
To complement the City’s excellent inventory of all trees on public land, the Victoria Community Association Network (VCAN) has involved each neighbourhood in an inventory of Garry oaks and other elements of biodiversity on private property. Each neighbourhood developed their own approach and will be reporting back to residents on what they learned and what we have learned about the larger patterns within our urban forest.
The urban area of the City of Victoria is the Garry oak ecosystem (GOE)–– a fact often left out of discussions on the urban forest. Objectives of the project include:
- to connect people, cultural connections to the territory, map current Garry oak distribution, enhance canopy equity.
- to directly benefit residents and wildlife, wildlife corridors for the movement and dispersal of organisms, and establish nodes of functioning.
- assist in protecting and restoring the function of sensitive ecosystems and natural areas, including habitat corridors and assist with the parks acquisition strategy (9.2 of the Official Community Plan).
This project was made possible by a City of Victoria “My Great Neighbourhood Grant”, the volunteers, a GIC consultant, and support letters from the Sierra Club and the Rockland Neighbourhood Association who administered the grant.
GOMPS provided a letter of support and urban forest expertise via a walking tour for participants.
Presentation Slides
Presentation slides by Carollyne Yardley (.pdf) (Rockland Neighbourhood)
Printed slide deck at wrap up event by Jacklyn Jolicoeur(.pdf) (James Bay Neighbourhood)Mapping Tutorials
VCAN Mapping Tutorial (.pdf) (Cedar Shore Consulting)
Ken Wong’s Organic Maps Tutorial (.pdf) (Hillside/Quadra)Preliminary Suitable Habitat Analysis
Preliminary statistical analysis of environmental characteristics at mapped Garry Oak Tree locations (.pdf) (Cedar Shore Consulting)Dear Developer: An Earthly Invitation template (.doc) (March 2025)
Final Report – VCAN Community Mapping Project (.pdf) (March 2025)
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Ryan Senechal. ĆEṈ¸IȽĆ (Garry oak) and the urban forest, Speaker Series: Garry Oak Trees and Ecosystems, Rockland Neighbourhood Association, March 2023.
with Ryan Senechal, President of the Garry Oak Meadow Preservation Society
Many thanks to Ryan Senechal, President of the Garry Oak Meadow Preservation Society, and everyone who attended this speaker series presentation. The event was recorded and is posted below (PPT slides are coming soon). We have also posted instructions on how to best collect Garry oak acorns and deliver to the GOMPS nursery to help with the preservation of the Garry oak tree.
Tuesday, March 14th, 2023: Video of presentation