Work is about to resume in the Cortes Community Forest.
Mark Lombard, General Manager for the Cortes Forestry General Partnership, explained, “The spring cut is going to happen in the Coulter Bay area of the community forest. We’ll probably start a small segment of road in about three weeks. While the road is being built, maybe a month from now, we’re going to move over to Larsen’s Meadow. They’re both relatively small projects.”
Continue reading 2026 Spring Cut in the Cortes Community Forest
With all the current hype about the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA), Cortes Currents reached out to two rural politicians to ask how they see this legislation working at the local level. Mark Vonesch is the Regional Director for Area B (Cortes Island) and Robyn Mawhinney is the Regional Director for Area C, which includes Quadra and most of the other Discovery Islands. They both sit on the board of the Strathcona Regional District (SRD).
Continue reading Reconciliation: Two Regional Directors Speak Out on DRIPA and the Path of Reconciliation
The Cortes Forestry General Partnership held its public meeting on October 9th, 2025. In today’s interview, Operations Manager Mark Lombard talks about leadership transitions, plans for selective logging, the Forest Stewardship Plan review, and other topics from the meeting. He also shares his personal opinion about how climate change is affecting our forest.
“We try to have a public meeting every year and we cover whatever topics are relevant at that point. There’s always the year in review, so what have we done in the last year since the last public meeting and what are we planning in the coming year,” explained Lombard.
Continue reading Cortes Island’s Community Forest Operations in 2025/26
There’s a wildfire risk reduction underway in the Community Forest near Squirrel Cove.
“This is something that we’ve been working on since 2018. It was identified as a priority in the 2020 Community Wildfire Protection Plan. We received funding for a prescription, then we got funding to do an archaeological assessment, as required by law in the Tla’amin First Nation and then this year we obtained funding through the Forest Enhancement Society of BC to carry out the treatment.. I’m just really excited to see it happening because when you see an overgrown plantation like this, it feels really good to be able to reinvest in the land base to leave a better forest for the future generation and reduce the wildfire risk in this neighbourhood,” explained to Mark Lombard, General Manager of the Cortes Forestry General Partnership.
Continue reading Wildfire Risk Reduction in Squirrel Cove area
The Cortes Community Forest Co-operative’s 2024 AGM will be from 7:30 to 9 PM on Mansons Hall on Wednesday October 9th.
Together with Klahoose Forestry, they make up the Cortes Forestry General Partnership. Mark Lombard, General Manager for the Partnership gave Cortes Currents an overview of their operations this year and plans for the future:
Mark Lombard: “We have pretty good support from the community. Our emphasis is building value for the community, training workers and providing firewood for seniors and logs for local mills. We’re the lightest touch logging operation in the province by a mile and a half.”
“Log prices are really low right now. There’s potential concerns about a recession in the US, or globally, for whatever reasons and because prices are low, we’re not planning to do any logging right now.”
Cortes Currents: So where were you working this year?
Continue reading September 2024 Update from the Cortes Community Forest
