Metro Vancouver’s Ecological Health Plan

Completing the Ecological Health Plan (EHP) is a priority action in the 2009 Metro Vancouver Sustainability Framework, a guiding document that demonstrates how sustainability is integrated into the corporation’s operations, plans, and outreach programs. The EHP will identify Metro Vancouver’s role in protecting and enhancing the region’s ecological health and will identify important actions that other levels of government and agencies can undertake.

Metro Vancouver’s winding shorelines, fertile agricultural lands, forested slopes and snow-capped mountains are natural place-making emblems that symbolize our regional identity. We are fortunate to have a ‘green’ region where parks, street trees, urban streams and green buildings infuse nature into the places that we live. Despite these features, in our growing region, our natural areas continue to be degraded, fragmented and subject to pressure for conversion to urban uses.

The EHP will offer direction on how to build on, and improve connectivity among, our existing protected areas and limit further conversion. It will support adaptive and resilient management, and seek creative, ecologically-based solutions to complex multi-jurisdictional issues. Finally, the plan seeks to cultivate connections to what sustains us – finding ways to continue to bring nature into the city and recognize the interdependency between the health of our environment and our health, well-being and quality of life.  more information

What is ecological health?

Ecological health is a state of environmental well-being where the environment has sufficient resiliency, integrity and vitality to maintain its processes and functions, and continues to provide us with essential ecosystem services.