Tag Archives: Cortes Island

Indigenous Nations, Transportation

Klahoose Bus Receives Jo Ann Green Award

Every year, the Friend of Cortes Island (FOCI) presents the Jo Ann Green Award to a Cortes Islander who made significant contributions to the environmental well being of the community. 

There are pictures of Green at some of the island’s early social gatherings in the Cortes Island Museum Archives. She was one of the actors in the 1981 Cortes Cinema Production: Where Does the Lone Ranger Take His Garbage? Jo Ann Green was also a founder and the first President of FOCI, a member of the Cortes Oyster Co-op and an active homemaker is support of home services on the island. The award certificate states she ‘represents the spirit of Cortes Island’s resilience and its residents’ recognition of the vital importance of the natural environment.’

The 2025 Jo Ann Green Award recipient was the Klahoose Bus. 

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Animals

Canadian and US regulations are at odds in the Salish Sea, and whales are caught in the middle

Editor’s note: The Orcas that visit Cortes, Quadra and the Redonda Islands are mostly members of the northern resident pod, but there also get visitors from the southern pod.

Canada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

The Salish Sea is one ecosystem but Canada and the US are playing by different rules when it comes to protecting threatened whales, experts warn. 

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Community, Education

Looking back on Hollyhock in 2025 and what lies ahead in 2026

It has been nine months since Katia Sol took over the helm as Hollyhock’s CEO. She has also had more than two decades of experience working with nonprofits, starting as a volunteer in a Bolivian Indigenous community and going on to co-direct the Ecology of Leadership at the Regenerative Design Institute, founding her own coaching and leadership development business, and teaching at Stanford University. In today’s interview she talks about this past year at Hollyhock and what lies ahead in 2026. 

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Disaster

2025 at the Cortes Island Fire Department

With 2025 coming to a close, it seems like a good time to get an update from the Cortes Island Fire Department. Currently, there are about 38 people working out of the island’s two fire halls, with another 20 enrolled in the wildfire brigade. 

Chief Eli McKenty noted, “I haven’t totalled this year’s call volume yet, but last year we had 105 calls. This year, we’re likely slightly higher at around 110.” 

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Animals, Rivers & Oceans

Where Killer Whales and Dolphins Hunt Cooperatively

A new study found that Northern Resident Killer Whales and Pacific white-sided dolphins have formed a cooperative hunting relationship to catch Chinook salmon in the Johnstone Strait and Queen Charlotte Sound. The dolphins utilize echolocation to locate fish at depth, but their small teeth are designed primarily to grip prey, and they cannot swallow large species like Chinook salmon whole. Instead, dolphins locate the fish, and then wait for the killer whales move in to tear them apart, scattering bits of tissue and flesh into the water.

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