Tag Archives: Danger Trees

Forests

Wildfire Risk Reduction in Squirrel Cove area

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.

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Forests

MYCOBlitz 2023 on Cortes Island

“The goal of a MYCOblitz is to document MYCOdiversity; i.e. the diversity of fungal species present on Cortes Island.Fungal fruiting bodies vary month to month, location to location, season to season. Therefore ongoing MYCOblitz’s are required to cover these bases!!” – email from Sabina Leader Mense

Close to 70 people of all ages took part in Cortes Island’s community fungal forest walk on November 1, 2023. The students of the Cortes Island Academy were among them. We were greeted outside the Linnaea Education Centre by one of the islands better known scientists, who declared:

“Good afternoon. Good afternoon. ‘Truncocolumella citrina‘ you can call me, the Latin name for Lemon truffle. On any day other than MYCOblitz, my name is Sabina Leader Mense. I’m a founding director and an educational research associate with the Forest Trust for the Children of Cortez Island Society and it’s my pleasure on their behalf to be hosting MYCOblitz 2023.” (Cheers)

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Forests

Fuel mitigation around the Cortes Recycling Centre

 “When you talk about fuel, most people think about fuel for a vehicle or fuel for something like that, but fuel for a forest fire  is wood on the ground or standing wood? The idea  is to reduce the fuel load to reduce the severity of a fire. As it approaches that location, the fire will slow down and most likely drop to the ground because we’ve opened up the canopy. The danger trees have been removed and the debris on the ground’s been removed. So it would be a lot easier for firefighters to make a stand,” explained Tor Ellingsen of Reef Point Falling.

He was talking about the recently completed Cortes Island Recycling Centre Wildfire Mitigation Project.

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Forests

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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Forests

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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