Camosun College’s Tree Massacre

Camosun College’s Tree Massacre

By Sasha Izard
March 15, 2026

It’s been an ongoing theme on CRD Watch, and in my writings that Post-Secondary Institutions on Southern Vancouver Island, shackled to the unsustainability of ecology destroying growth-based capitalism and a government also under its shackles, in particular to the development industry – are machineries of ecological destruction, and nowhere do they demonstrate that better than in and around their campuses.

2 years ago, I documented such destruction in and around the University of Victoria, a pattern that was already well established, with the around a dozen mature oaks along Finnerty taken down, and the taking down of well established trees in the area of the bus depot some years back.

The Latest Environmental Destruction in and Around the University of Victoria (UVic) – CRD Watch Homepage

Now this pattern has repeated on an even worse and more glaring scale on the Camosun College Campus. Camosun itself was a spinoff of the University of Victoria.

Last week UVic mowed down a vast swathe of trees leaving a pile of stumps in an area that previously served as refuge to bird and animal life.

Camosun’s mass grave of trees:

Various mature Garry Oaks went down:

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And here is the most mind numbing part: There is a giant parking lot, practically devoid of trees right next to it that could be developed without taking down a single tree: