Tag Archives: Cortes Community Forest

Community Forest Cooperative seeks proposals to create products from local wood

By Greg Osoba, CKTZ News, through an LJI grant from Canada-info.ca

The Cortes Community Forest Cooperative (CCFC) is hoping to reduce logging on Cortes Island by developing more wood products locally.

The organization, in partnership with the local Klahoose First Nation, holds a community forest tenure with the BC Ministry of Forests, covering about 30 per cent of the crown land on the island, according to CCFC President Carrie Saxifrage. Each year the partnership needs to harvest a demonstrable portion of trees under its tenure.

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Confusion around the proposed Anvil Lake logging road

Cortes Currents published a factually incorrect story about the proposed Anvil Lake logging road on Tuesday, August 30, 2022.

Few people knew this, because I pulled the story before it was broadcast on Cortes Radio.

Nick Reed, a local resident, told me, “The concern is mainly the wetlands that this road has to go through, and what effect that will have on Gunflint (and Anvil) Lakes. It is the last wetland on the southern part of Cortes.”

Mark Lombard, general manager of the Cortes Forestry General Partnership (CFGP),  responded, “The CFGP never builds roads through wetlands.”

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Cutting Old Growth: Quadra Woodlot holder responds

On August 17, Cortes Currents published a review of David Broadland’s report ‘Land-use planning on Quadra Island has been undone by the Ministry of Forests.’

Broadland wrote that while all of the other Quadra Island woodlots leave big trees standing, Okisollo Resources fells a substantial number. In ‘before’ and ‘after’ satellite images from one of their cutblocks at Hummingbird Lake, he showed that 35 out of about 50 were logged in July and August of 2019. 

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Mosaic informs SRD of its intentions for Cortes and Quadra Islands

Mosaic informed the SRD Board of its intentions to log Cortes and Quadra Islands in a presentation at the August 17 SRD Board meeting.  

“Earlier this year, we were really happy to announce that Way Kay Ventures, a newly formed company owned in part by the We Wai Kai First Nation is providing us with our timber harvesting services on Quadra island. So great to see that nation, working with us on our crown tenures, to participate in the forest sector in their traditional territory,” explained Molly Hudson, Mosaic’s Director of Sustainability. “We’ve been talking a lot with the community on Cortes about upcoming harvest plans, which we intend to launch this fall.”

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Controversy over a Quadra Island Woodlot

David Broadland recently wrote a devastating critique of the old growth logging at Hummingbird Lake on Quadra Island. It is sometimes necessary to cut down an old growth tree, so I asked the Cortes Community Forest how often this occurs in their operation.

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