A once lush urban forest, now reduced to bare ground and piles of cut timber.

“It’s just sad… it makes me sick to my stomach,” Kelowna resident Amanda Wall said. “It kept me up at night thinking about it.”

Dozens of trees have been cut down as part of the City of Kelowna’s $9.1 million Mill Creek flood protection project, tied to the broader Parkinson Recreation Centre plan.

City officials say the work is necessary.

“What’s happening is we’re restoring the natural creek, improving fish habitat, and creating about a 15-metre setback,” said Mac Logan, Kelowna’s Infrastructure General Manager.

That includes removing mature trees along the creek’s edge.

“They need to be removed for a number of reasons, some are not natural to the area, in some cases they are invasive species, and others are in the way of the future channel,” Logan said.

But for nearby residents, the environmental cost is hard to ignore.

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“This is destroying homes, animals’ homes, that have been here for over 10 years,” said Kat Scott.

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The city maintains that timing is also a factor.

“One of the reasons we’re doing the work at this time of year is to take the trees down before migratory birds come back and nest. We did get the permits to do that,” Logan said.

Still, tensions escalated after a raccoon was spotted in a tree marked for removal.

“There’s a raccoon up there,” someone can be heard yelling in a video captured at the site.

“I was horrified, absolutely horrified,” Scott said.

While the landscape now appears stark, the city says it won’t stay that way, promising to plant 800 new trees along with roughly 6,000 plants and shrubs.

“They’re going to have to bring in some big trees to make it even a fraction of what it used to be,” said resident Ashley Renner.

For now, the chainsaws have quieted, but for many who live nearby, the debate over what’s been lost and what comes next is far from over.

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