Tag Archives: Klahoose Forestry

Mark Lombard: Community Forest 5-Year Plan

The Cortes Community Forestry Co-operative held its annual AGM on May 7th at Mansons Hall. The Co-operative is an equal partner with Klahoose First Nation in the Cortes Forestry General Partnership, locally known as the “Community Forest.” Mark Lombard is the General Manager for the Partnership.

At the Forestry Co-op AGM, Mark reminded attendees that a public meeting would be held soon (May 11 at the Klahoose Multipurpose Hall). At this meeting he would present a review of the Partnership’s activities to date, and their plans for the next few years. This event would mark the launch of a public input period for the “Five Year Plan” for the Community Forest project.

At this point in the planning process, the five year plan is wide open for comment and feedback. And if there’s an area that someone thinks would be a sensible area to operate in — in the next five years — that hasn’t been considered, please bring that forward.

If there are any other features or concerns or ideas… basically what I’m trying to say is, it’s wide open to public feedback, so we’d like to hear from people, and everything’s on the table at this point.

— Mark Lombard

Currents interviewed Mark on May 19th, to offer our readers/listeners an overview of the material he covered in his May 11 presentation. [The audio version of this interview is quite different from the image-heavy text version, so we recommend that interested readers check out both media.]

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Ellingsen Woods search for a value added market

“When I came to Cortes, I imagined just making boards is a great thing to do. I’ve had a number of years to assess and reassess that reality. It’s possible as a one man operation for me to do okay at that, but it’s a subsistence business not a business model. It’s not a business plan,” explained Aaron Ellingsen.

His company, Ellingsen Woods, is about to go through a relaunch. 

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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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Jason Johnson: QXMC’s new General Manager

Cortes Currents learned that Jason Johnson was going to be Qathen Xwegus Management Corporation’s (QXMC) new General Manager back in June, but at that time he was busy finishing up as Sayward’s Chief Administrative Officer (CAO). Around the time Johnson took over the helm of the Klahoose First Nation’s economic development corporation, I was on vacation for three weeks. We finally sat down on Monday to talk about Johnson’s first five weeks at the helm of QXMC.

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Pereira stepping down from QXMC: What happened?

Bruno Pereira was back in Montreal, visiting his family, when Cortes Currents first interviewed him. That was two weeks ago, on Aril 22. When he returned to Squirrel Cove, Pereira spoke further about three of his ‘babies’: – the Klahoose forestry, aquaculture and tourism sectors. Then word came that Bruno Pereira is resigning and will no longer be Senior Manager of Qathen Xwegus Management Corporation (QXMC). 

Continue reading Pereira stepping down from QXMC: What happened?