Is there value in beauty?

The most obvious thing about Echo Heights is its beauty. There are achingly beautiful photos of this special forest on the Echo Heights Gallery pages.

And beneath all that obvious beauty is an amazing ecological micro-system – the microbes, fungi, lichen and grubs and beetles; all marks of a fairly self-sustaining place despite being surrounded either by agriculture or housing for many decades.

For such a fragile space, it’s a pretty tough place too. It survived and restored itself from being logged in the early 1900s. Out of the big stumps came new growth, red huckleberry, big leaf maple, salal, fir, hemlock and cedar. Moss, lichen and fern cover most evidence of previous logging.

There are some who don’t see or appreciate Echo Heights. As mentioned by someone elsewhere on these web pages, they fly over in helicopters and study maps with GPS readings.

It was amazing how little members of council and municipal staff involved in the development plans knew about this place. Even the mayor, a resident of our town, admitted he hadn’t walked through Echo Heights until just a few days before that ill-fated charrette in February.

Maybe they aren’t blind to the beauty, but are all coming in with pre-conceived notions based on the words “development,” “expansion,” or “growth”. Everyone seems to read from the same textbook when it comes to urban planning.

But there is a school of thought that says that there can be greater value in preserving pristine land; that savings and profits can be generated by a place where there’s beauty and silence.

A few years ago, the Journal of Leisure Research published a report entitled Impact of Parks on Property Values. It showed that a passive park like Echo Heights (as opposed to a sports field) raised property values by such an extent that the rise in tax revenue actually paid for maintenance.

The report said: “It is suggested that a positive impact of 20% on property values abutting or fronting a passive park area is a reasonable starting point guideline. If the park is large (say over 25 acres), well maintained, attractive, and its use is mainly passive, then this figure is likely to be low.”

Wow! So, property values could rise by more than 20% for the neighbours of Echo Heights. And the report found that values for outlying neighbours also increased substantially.

It makes sense, doesn’t it? Everyone wants to live near a beautiful place. Tax income will rise for North Cowichan just by preserving Echo Heights. And there’s no telling what the spin-off benefits will be.

One only has to look at how far people drive to visit Ladysmith's Holland Creek Trail or the Cowichan River Trails. For a town that sells itself as a tourist attraction, the addition of Echo Heights to the sales arsenal of Chemainus is a no-brainer.

Then there’s the other savings that North Cowichan might gain through preservation. There are no infrastructure costs. And a natural forest is about the best storm water management system out there.

All in all, saving Echo Heights can be one of those win-win-win situations that only occur once in a lifetime or once in a community. The community obviously cares. Now we have to respectfully convince the powers-that-be of the real value that lies in this beauty.

By Mark Kiemele