A total of 92 species are listed in Cortes Island’s Spring 2022 Bird count. More than 20 birders participated, including local naturalist George Sirk who started the day off as a guide on board the Misty Isles. This year’s count was expanded to include Mitlenatch island, where Sirk served as a naturalist in 1969 and 71.
Continue reading Cortes Island’s Spring 2022 Bird Count
National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
The Cortes Islanders smiling, singing, and snacking outside the Gorge Harbour clapboard community hall might have been gathered for a spring picnic — if it weren’t for the sizable collection of anti-logging protest signs pitched across the lawn.
Any collective cheer quickly dissipated and anger bubbled up in the crowd on Tuesday afternoon when Mosaic Forest Management representatives began to outline draft plans for logging operations on the small B.C. island over the next three years
Continue reading On Cortes Island, it’s all songs and warm vibes until the logging begins(Click here to access other presentations taken from the Committee.)
One hundred and two British Columbian First Nations are calling for fish farms to move onto land. The Klahoose, Tla’amin, Homalco and K’omox First Nations are among them. On May 12, Chief Bob Chamberlain, Chair of the First Nations Wild Salmon Alliance, told Parliament’s Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans that DFO is a captured regulator of the fish farm industry
Chamberlain began by addressing the committee in his native tongue.
This is a transcript of the rest of his opening presentation.
Continue reading First Nations Wild Salmon Alliance calls DFO a ‘captured regulator’ of the fish farm industryHow our local government works
The Strathcona Regional District will be inviting all First Nations in the district to Board meetings. Within the Cortes Currents broadcast area, this should include the Klahoose, Homalco, Tla’amin, We wai Kai, Wei wai Kum and Laichkwiltach First Nations.
Continue reading SRD inviting First Nations to Board meetingsThere are 60 community forests in British Columbia, but only one of them is a general partnership. This can be traced back 23 years, to a MOU in which the Klahoose First Nation and the Cortes Ecoforestry Society agreed to work towards a community forest. Then, in September 2013 the Ministry of Forests issued a Community Forest Agreement to the Cortes Forestry General Partnership (CFGP).
Continue reading The Cortes Forestry General Partnership
