To the Editor,
Putting large green spaces in the midst of the city does not serve as some sort of wildlife reserve or promote the safety of larger mammals.
The saving of Linley Valley is nothing less than anti-development and is Mickey Mouse. We should be looking at the whole First to Fourth Lakes watershed as a game reserve to protect the future.
We should draw the lines in the maps according to human development and exclude game reserving within our existence.
To think that we can live with nature and invite cougars and bears to our backyards is nothing less than a death sentence.
We see on the television how lions, elephants and rhinos are all near extinct, but we don’t realize that the cougar population is only 350 on the Island, yet we blast them to smithereens at the very sight of them.
Linley Valley should be a Jack Nicklaus designed 18-hole golf course. The four lakes should be a land reserve. There should be an automobile race track near Nanaimo. The rail yard should be purchased by us and the First Nations and build a world class arena.
The E&N should be rebuilt and not just Band-aided. The port should be redesignated as an international duty-free zone.
The poor and unemployed should be hired to remove the invasive species in the area. The First Nations should be employed to carve new totems for the city. And the bathtub race should have a $50,000 first prize.
Anything less is just Mickey Mouse.
Matt James
Nanaimo