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Forests

Mark Lombard: Community Forest 5-Year Plan

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The Cortes Community Forestry Co-operative held its annual AGM on May 7th at Mansons Hall. The Co-operative is an equal partner with Klahoose First Nation in the Cortes Forestry General Partnership, locally known as the “Community Forest.” Mark Lombard is the General Manager for the Partnership.

At the Forestry Co-op AGM, Mark reminded attendees that a public meeting would be held soon (May 11 at the Klahoose Multipurpose Hall). At this meeting he would present a review of the Partnership’s activities to date, and their plans for the next few years. This event would mark the launch of a public input period for the “Five Year Plan” for the Community Forest project.

At this point in the planning process, the five year plan is wide open for comment and feedback. And if there’s an area that someone thinks would be a sensible area to operate in — in the next five years — that hasn’t been considered, please bring that forward.

If there are any other features or concerns or ideas… basically what I’m trying to say is, it’s wide open to public feedback, so we’d like to hear from people, and everything’s on the table at this point.

— Mark Lombard

Currents interviewed Mark on May 19th, to offer our readers/listeners an overview of the material he covered in his May 11 presentation. [The audio version of this interview is quite different from the image-heavy text version, so we recommend that interested readers check out both media.]

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Forests

The Quadra Project – Logging’s Carbon – Part 2

Click here to access part one

Loggers on Quadra Island are confronted with a dilemma. Whether they cut trees from TFL 47 or from any of the 11 licenced woodlots, the carbon stored in the forests is released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, thereby contributing to the climate crisis. But loggers are required by law, as operators of their tenures, to cut an annual amount of merchantable wood—measured as cubic metres—to earn royalties, called stumpage, for government revenue. Because most logged wood becomes the raw material used for making paper, packaging and many other disposable products, most of the cut wood is quickly consumed or discarded, and its stored carbon is released into the atmosphere as CO2 within the first year following logging—only about 20% of the cubic metres measured as forest product is sequestered up to a century as lumber for buildings or as kept objects such as furniture.

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Forests, Rivers & Oceans

Running on Empty: Déjà vu

In 1949, Newfoundland joined Canada as a new Province. Its fisheries then fell under the authority of the central government in Ottawa — the infamous DFO (Department of Fisheries and Oceans, or as some call it, the Dead Fish Organisation).

DFO’s mismanagement of the Newfoundland fishery — the immensely productive shoal banks of the northern Atlantic seaboard — is now a classic cautionary tale. DFO’s bureaucrats ignored repeated warnings — from marine biologists, environmentalists, and fishermen themselves — and allowed brutal overfishing of Canadian waters.

The high-value fish in those waters were the prolific Atlantic cod, the basis for centuries of both subsistence and prosperity for fishing communities. Larger industrialised boats, more entrants each season, and ruthless exploitation of the stocks ensured that prosperity was short-lived. To be fair, other nations hammered even harder on the cod stocks of the North Atlantic; but Canada could have done something to protect the fish in its territorial waters — and did far too little, far too late.

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Forests

Cortes Community Forest

This week, Cortes Currents presents a conversation with the Manager of the Cortes Community Forest, Mark Lombard, and President of the Cortes Community Forest Cooperative, Carrie Saxifrage.  The Cortes Community Forest Cooperative (CCFC) is the non-aboriginal equal partner with the Klahoose First Nation in the Cortes Forest General Partnership (CFGP).

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