The Friends of Cortes Island (FOCI) was talked about in the past tense, when Delores Broten and Don Malcom moved to Cortes in 1987. In the first of a series of posts about the origins of FOCI, Broten talks about the 1990 logging blockade that inspired FOCI’s rebirth, and led to the award-winning environmental magazine ‘the Watershed Sentinel.’
Continue reading Delores Broten: the 1990 logging blockade, FOCI and origins of the Watershed SentinelHow our local government works
At their last meeting, the SRD Board approved a motion to keep the wood chips created by it’s residential wood debris pickup in rural areas, but have yet to decide how they will be distributed.
Continue reading SRD deciding how to allocate wood chipsSeven adults and two children came to monitor wildlife in the Dillon Creek Wetlands, on April 1st.
Friends of Cortes Island (FOCI) streamkeepers Cec and Christine Robinson and FOCI’s Autumn Barrett-Morgan led the educational event. They began by listening to the birds, whose calls came from every side, and the gurgling flow of Dillon Creek. The aroma of damp earth rose to everyone’s nostrils.
Continue reading Monitoring fish and insects in the Dillon Creek Wetlands
[researched and written by Mike Moore, edited and produced for radio by De Clarke]
Cortes Islanders are very aware that we live on an island. The landbase has a very defined perimeter with the ocean; but the way the land wraps around and encloses the island’s many harbours and bays means that the land has a very intimate and close connection with the ocean. We know that the land, lakes, creeks and ocean are all interrelated.
Standing on a Cortes beach allows one to see what is happening on the lands around us in a bigger perspective. From Smelt Bay, we could witness the clearcuts sprawling across the mountainsides on Vancouver Island. From either side of Sutil Point, we could see the pulp mills in Campbell River and Powell River belching steam and smoke into the sky.
Continue reading A Brief History of Forest Activism on Cortes Island
By Greg Osoba, CKTZ News, through an LJI grant from Canada-info.ca
With funding from the BC government, the Friends of Cortes Island (FOCI) conservation and education society is taking part in a “threatened species” field research project aimed at determining the local status of the Western Screech Owl. The launch began with a public notice to Cortes Islanders on February 23rd and includes an evening presentation with a field biologist on March 7th.
Continue reading Friends of Cortes Island Society launches Western Screech Owl research project
