The Editor,

Re: "Tough sell as developer faces Burns Bog defenders," the Now, April 19.

If "MK Delta says site of proposed project is not bog land," as Tim Fitzgerald's story states, why does their own report submitted to Delta mayor and council describe it as "a remnant peripheral portion of Burns Bog?"

It's part of the eastern, and higher, of the two peat-filled water mounds which comprise Burns Bog, cut off from one another for a while when the Fraser flowed where traffic now does on Highway 91.

The water that runs off the slopes of this wonderful bit of wildland pours underneath Highway 91 in culverts and then deep into the ecological reserve, through historic ditches, before flowing northward through the reserve to the Fraser River.

In my many years of tramping through this beloved and unique portion of Burns Bog, I've found it to be well-frequented by bears (for example clawing their way up old cedars to get at honey in their hollows), as well as deer, coyotes, eagles, likely nesting great-horned owls, nesting red-tailed hawks, and a rich assortment of often nesting songbirds.

It consists of a diverse, radically changing series of north-south running strips of vegetation, each supportive of a different assemblage of plants and animals.

Most importantly, this land contains the natural, southerly course of Cougar Creek, to which this tortured, diverted stream happily returns many times a year when it rains hard long enough. It is salmon habitat, which must be fully restored.

This land, and all other portions of Burns Bog now held by MK Delta, were awarded to government in an already written court order, until the lawyer for the provincial Liberal government told the judge the province did not want them, and a lawyer for one of the owners told the judge the presently-excluded lands had no ecological value whatsoever.

We must undo this misdeed and reacquire these lands we already held for oh-so-short a time, and lost due to deceit.

If those in office will not do so, we must replace them, as we have had to many times already to get what we wanted done in the bog.

Don DeMille, Delta