The Soft-Shore Treatment

A small park on a British Columbia estuary models nature-based coastal development.

KATHARINE LOGAN

ECOLOGY On a weekend in mid-September, roughly two dozen volunteers gathered near the mouth of the Courtenay River, on the east coast of Vancouver Island, to plant a stretch of salt marsh. Their work followed the removal, a month earlier, of an old seawall and concrete viewing platform and the regrading of a section of the adjacent estuary to improve habitat. The activity was tightly choreographed into a government-mandated window of time—referred to by project team members as “the fish window”—to minimize risks to marine life. The interventions are part of the redevelopment of Dyke Road Park, a 1.5-acre site on the K’ómoks Estuary, one of the most ecologically significant estuaries in British Columbia. A $1.1 million demonstration site for nature-based coastal resilience measures, the park may be small, but…

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Landscape Architecture (Digital) - 1 Issue, December 2024

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