No syrup in Saanich: Tapping maple trees in park illegal
Credit to Author: Lora Grindlay| Date: Sat, 01 Feb 2020 00:59:09 +0000
VICTORIA — It was a sticky situation for whoever tapped three maple trees in Saanich’s Mount Douglas Park, violating a bylaw.
Last weekend, someone noticed a white bucket at the base of a tree, mostly hidden in the forest. They discovered a second 18.9-litre bucket set up to collect sap from a tap drilled into another tree. A third tapped tree was found a few days later.
“The person obviously tried to hide them,” said Darrell Wick, president of the Friends of Mount Douglas Park Society. “They were way off the trail in the brush, and on the side of the tree that you can’t see from the trail.”
Wick guessed the taps hadn’t been in the trees for long, because the buckets were mostly empty.
Three maple trees in Mount Douglas Park were tapped for sap, which violates a Saanich parks bylaw.
Saanich’s parks management bylaw prohibits destroying or damaging a tree in a park or on a beach. Violating the bylaw can come with a minimum $100 fine.
“Drilling holes does damage to that section of the tree,” Wick said. “It’s just plain against the bylaw. It’s just the wrong thing to do.”
He noted that with more than 400,000 annual visits to the park, if just one per cent don’t respect the rules, that adds up to 4,000 damaged trees.
After media reports about the taps and the fine that could accompany them, the equipment disappeared on Tuesday.
The tree tapper probably wouldn’t have had much luck, because Victoria’s winter is a little too warm, said Gary Backlund, who has been harvesting sap and making maple syrup on Vancouver Island for 20 years.
The island does produce maple syrup — Backlund estimates there are about 1,000 people who harvest sap to create syrup as a hobby and a small number who produce commercially — but it comes from bigleaf maple trees rather than sugar maples, which grow in Eastern Canada.
The bigleaf species gives syrup from Vancouver Island a stronger taste than the sweet stuff from the east, and a slight caramel flavour.
“It’s a little too strong for pancakes. It excels for things like glazing vegetables, salmon or ham, or for making desserts,” Backlund said.
Tapping for syrup on the island follows the same process as in Quebec, New Brunswick and Ontario — which are famous for producing maple syrup — but it’s done at a different time of year.
“We need a nice, long cold snap, and a little bit of warm, sunny weather,” said Backlund, a founding member of the Vancouver Island Sapsuckers, a group of maple syrup producers who organize an annual maple syrup festival in Duncan.
Read more Island stories at timescolonist.com