The numbers are not in yet, but there are enough returning Chum in Basil Creek to justify milking them for eggs. A group of nine Klahoose employees and Cortes Island Streamkeepers carried this out on Tuesday, November 4, 2025.
No one wished to comment at this time.
Continue reading Milking the Chum in Basil Creek
Over the past decade, a quiet but deeply dedicated group of islanders has transformed the health and future of Cortes Island’s salmon-bearing streams. At the heart of this story are Christine and Cec Robinson, whose leadership helped launch the Cortes Streamkeepers into a community-wide conservation effort that today is rebuilding fish populations, improving habitat, and inspiring a new generation of salmon stewards.
Continue reading The Story of the Island’s Streamkeepers
The Audobin Society has been holding Christmas Bird Counts across North America for the past 125 years.
On Cortes Island it is co-sponsored by the Cortes Island Museum and Birds Canada. Thirty-nine walkers, cyclists, boaters, and people in cars participated in the Cortes Island 2024 Christmas Bird Count. This was the third time that more than 4,000 birds have been counted since the islands first Christmas Bird Count in 2001. A new record was set: 4,545 Birds were listed.
Donna Collins explained, “We had more birders out, more areas covered and lots of birds counted.”
Continue reading Cortes Island’s Biggest Christmas Bird Count EverThe faint stench of rotting salmon greets visitor’s nostrils just beyond the Squirrel Cove Store. Further down the rocky beach, at the mouth of Basil Creek, clouds of seagulls feasted upon the corpses. A few of the dead Chum Salmon were reduced to skeletons, but most have been left to rot. The only body part missing is their eyes, a delicacy among sea gulls.
Continue reading Nature’s Salmon Feast at Basil Creek
There has been a lot going on at the Cortes Community Housing Society. They are starting to provide housing for the community, are supporting changes to the island’s bylaws and are acting as a matchmaker for potential renters and landlords. However the first story I want to cover this morning is about the aquifer study that is about to begin.
“We just received a grant from the Real Estate Foundation to develop an aquifer health assessment for our island. A lot of the islands south of us are having water problems and we really want to get ahead of this by being proactive and understanding what’s happening on our own island. With climate change, obviously many of the assumptions of how things work are changing, but getting baseline and putting in together some things that we as a community can do to protect our water systems seems important to do before we have the kind of problems that we’ve seen in other communities,” explained Sadhu Johnston, Executive Director of the Housing Society.
Continue reading Cortes Housing talks about Aquifers, Rental Opportunities & More
