Jennifer Pickford will be showing her documentary ECO Warriors at Mansons Hall on Tuesday April 22.
“This film is telling the story of several environmental activists who have faced imprisonment for their actions, as well as the actual and real threat of being labeled terrorists for protecting the land and the forest that they love,” she explained.
“Eco Warriors is about 12 years old. It’s one of my earlier works, but following on the footsteps of last year’s Earth Day screening of ‘Sacred India, A Plastic Revolution,’ I wanted to show another film because I felt that not only is it still a relevant topic, but also it’s just nice to have that continuity of having an Earth Day screening here on Cortes Island.”
In the foreword, Briony Penn wrote, “If you’ve picked up this book, chances are that you’ve fallen in love with the islands in the Salish Sea. You might have wondered how the heck they’ve retained their natural beauty against the hostile tsunami of contemporary clear-cuts, cookie cutter suburbs, and mindless malls that are encroaching elsewhere.”
Briony talks about the collective efforts of thousands of people over generations that have actually been working to maintain the beauty of the islands.
Sheila’s book documents the last 30 years of people (voices in the islands) who have been working at conservation. She includes a chapter on Cortes, so we’re in there with the best of them! I encourage everybody to pick her book up and have a read to see what the island community of conservationists have been doing.
Map of the Children’s Forest
The most exciting conservation story on Cortes today is definitely the Children’s Forest! This is the 624 acres of forest lands that stretch all the way from the Carrington Bay Road trailhead, east across Carrington Lagoon to Goat Mountain, just on the northern shore of Blue Jay Lake. These are lands owned by Island Timberlands. It’s part of their privately managed forest land base on Cortes Island.
By Maureen Williams and the Climate Action Network
In early July of 2024, a small group of Cortes Islanders, supported by Friends Of Cortes Island (FOCI), screened the film “How to Boil a Frog” for the community. The film is about the five-pronged problem life on Earth is currently facing — overpopulation, a war on nature, wealth disparity, peak oil, and climate change—and offers five actions that can help—boycott Exxon, change your “life” bulb (reduce consumption), a change of heart, one kid per couple, and kick some ass. This article is the first in a series focused on each of these five solutions from the film, and more. You can learn more about the film and the filmmaker, Jon Cooksey, here and here. You can even watch the film, here.
Last week, I sat down on zoom with television showrunner and independent film maker Jon Cooksey to talk about his 2010 film, “How to Boil a Frog”. The film, which also features Rex Weyler, is being screened at Manson’s Hall on Tuesday, July 9, at 7PM. Jon and Rex will be there to participate in discussion after the film.
In the interview, we talked about the events that led to his interest in climate change and ecological overshoot, his long friendship with Rex, and how his thoughts about impacting the future have evolved since making this film.
