Vandals chopped down trees to create trail in Victoria Park

City of Charlottetown staff discovered about 30 destroyed trees here in Victoria Park last week and land cleared for an unauthorized bike path. The act of vandalism happened in the forested area around Dead Man's Pond. So it looks like they've used an axe or some other sharp device to kind of chop at some of the trees and then they've been able to push at some of the trees and push them over and cut their roots in order to make ramps and paths in the area. Wilmot says this part of the forest is already very sensitive. The ecosystem took a hit after Fiona, and lost some vegetation from invasive species. He says staff began replanting last spring, and it's hard to see their progress set back. We've invested money and budget in restoring these trees, we have support from funders that help us do this work, we have volunteers that come in that help us and really it's a community effort and the loss of the number of trees probably doesn't sound as significant as it feels because of the amount of work that goes into plan and then execute this kind of restoration work. You can see that the edge has been cut. Wilmot says many trees were fully chopped down. Others were damaged, but likely can't be saved. He says for some rare species, it was a close call. We've got a one of our larger more mature yellow birches in this area which is a tree that is common to the forest region but isn't very common in like the downtown core that we have many of them and so we really want to look after some of these more rare ecologically significant trees and they put the path right up against it unfortunately. Wilmot says city staff have contacted Charlottetown police, but they have no way of knowing who could have done this since there are no cameras in the forested area. He says he's hopeful by getting the message out, someone may come forward. Victoria Park is that jewel of a park for the city of Charlottetown, and it does have this beautiful forested area, and we want to keep it as a forest, and it's important that we keep these patches with some ecological integrity. Wilmot says city staff have already spent about a day and a half with equipment to take down the ramps and fill in some holes in the path. Future restoration efforts, like more tree planting, will continue next spring. Cameron Farkas in CBC News, Charlottetown.