Tag Archives: Cowichan Valley

Cost of Climate Change

Scotch broom increases wildfire risk. What can we do about it?

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By Madeline Dunnett, The Discourse,  Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

In 1850, Scottish Army Capt. Walter Colquhoun Grant planted a European perennial shrub on his farm on T’Sou-ke Nation’s traditional territory (Sooke). He thought the shrub — Cytisus scorparius in Latin — would bring back nostalgia of his Scottish homeland, covered with hills of yellow flowers.

One-hundred and seventy-five years later, this shrub is now one of the most notorious invasive species on Vancouver Island known colloquially as Scotch broom. Vast areas of the Island are covered in this plant, exhibiting what a changed landscape can look like if invasive plants are allowed to spread and take over. It competes with native plants, disrupts streams and has no known natural predators. It can also live up to 25 years and produces seeds that can survive in the soil for 30 years. 

Scotch broom is also extremely flammable, leading to growing concern as the climate changes and Earth warms. 

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Politics

BC Green Party leader is coming out swinging

Canada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

B.C. Green Party Leader Sonia Furstenau says she’s disrupted the province’s two-party narrative before and intends to do it again in the Oct. 19 election.

Furstenau is running in a new riding, the NDP-held Victoria-Beacon Hill represented by incumbent Minister of Children and Families Grace Lore, after winning the Cowichan Valley seat twice since 2017.  

Furstenau will face a “tough fight” in the riding, a NDP stronghold represented by former party leader Carole James for nearly 20 years, said Hamish Telford, political scientist at the University of the Fraser Valley. 

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Arts

Bringing her interpretation of Tangka artwork to the Old Schoolhouse Art Gallery

Tamara Dawn has been travelling to India for the past 15 years. On August second she brings her personal interpretation of Tibetan Thangka art to the Old Schoolhouse Art Gallery in a watercolour collection called ‘Buddha as a Principle.’ 

“I was 18 when I took my first trip to the east, I went to Nepal. I went to India when I was maybe 20.  I’ve been  back and forth several times, going to India and Nepal, and then coming back to Canada and integrating what I learned,” she began.  

Cortes Currents: What’s special about India?  

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Indigenous Nations

After generations of displacement, ‘Vancouver Island’ lands returned to Lyackson, Cowichan First Nations

By  Julie Chadwick, IndigiNews,, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Surrounded by sun-dappled trees and the gentle rushing sound of Skutz Falls, a historic agreement to return 312 hectares of land to Lyackson First Nation and Cowichan Tribes was signed last week as part of an Incremental Treaty Agreement.

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Cost of Climate Change

Saving the Cowichan Estuary from drowning in a climate-fed ‘coastal squeeze’

Canada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

High atop a dike hemming the Koksilah River as its fresh waters meet salt, red-winged blackbirds call out as they patrol their territory.

Noisy heralds of spring, the blackbirds return to the Cowichan Estuary each year to nest and protest human intrusion with sharp signature trills from the brush along the riverbank.

Today the interloper is Tom Reid, conservation land management program manager with the Nature Trust of British Columbia (NTBC), who stands atop the 15-foot-high rock embankment he is working to destroy.

The dike, built to fortify farmland stolen from the estuary, is stifling the tidal marsh vital to the survival of a host of endangered salmon and bird species that rely on it for breeding, feeding and migration, he said.

Continue reading Saving the Cowichan Estuary from drowning in a climate-fed ‘coastal squeeze’ →