Tag Archives: Children's Forest Alumni

The Most Exciting Conservation Story on Cortes Island

Transcript of a radio broadcast by Sabina Leader Mense

Just last weekend several of us were at the Cortes Island Museum for the launch of Sheila Harrington’s new book ‘Voices For The Islands: 30 Years Of Nature Conservation In The Salish Sea.’ What Sheila does in this book is she celebrates this amazing community of conservationists that are living and working in the Salish Sea.  

In the foreword, Briony Penn wrote, “If you’ve picked up this book, chances are that you’ve fallen in love with the islands in the Salish Sea. You might have wondered how the heck they’ve retained their natural beauty against the hostile tsunami of contemporary clear-cuts, cookie cutter suburbs, and mindless malls that are encroaching elsewhere.” 

Briony talks about the collective efforts of thousands of people over generations that have actually been working to maintain the beauty of the islands. 

Sheila’s book documents the last 30 years of people (voices in the islands) who have been working at conservation. She includes a chapter on Cortes, so we’re in there with the best of them! I encourage everybody to pick her book up and have a read  to see what the island community of conservationists have been doing. 

The most exciting conservation story on Cortes today is definitely the Children’s Forest! This is the 624 acres of forest lands that stretch all the way from the Carrington Bay Road trailhead, east across Carrington Lagoon to Goat Mountain, just on the northern shore of Blue Jay Lake.  These are lands owned by Island Timberlands. It’s part of their privately managed forest land base on Cortes Island.

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A Beacon of Hope: Questions from the Children’s Forest Alumni

One of the world’s leading forest ecologists was the feature speaker at the Cortes Children’s Forest virtual AGM on Saturday, January 28th. This is the last in a series of programs from that meeting, in which Dr Suzanne Simard’s answers questions from the Children’s Forest Alumni. 

Forrest Berman-Hatch emceed the session and this abridged broadcast of the audio opens with him asking, “ How do you see the value of the Children’s Forest taking into account all the different factors that are important to small communities like the ecological, the economic, as well as the cultural and scientific values?”

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Raising $10,000 for the Forest Trust for the Children of Cortes Island, two reasons why  

‘Giving Tuesday’ is just five days away. The Forest Trust for the Children of Cortes Island Society (FTCCIS) is trying to raise $10,000 for the valuation and assessment which will hopefully lead to their purchasing two parcels of forest. There are actually several components to this story. This morning we are going to talk to two young women involved with the new Children’s Forest Video made for this fund raising drive. 

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