“One of the landowners has come forward, and they’re interested in selling the land for conservation. They’ve never developed the land, and they’d like to see it stay in the intact condition that it is right now. We are working with them to purchase the land so that we can prevent the conversion of habitat to residential use and maintain the habitat values for the species at risk that live on Cortes Island,” explained Dr Jasper Lament, CEO of the Nature Trust of British Columbia.
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.
There’s a lot happening at Wild Cortes this summer.
“Come to Wild Cortes because it’s the coolest place on the island, literally and figuratively. Literally because we’re in the basement and it’s always cool here,” said co-curator Donna Collins.
In 2021 Sheila Harrington embarked upon a three-year journey to explore the creation of local nature conservancies on 17 islands. Cortes and Quadra Islands were among them. She conducted more than 50 interviews, and wove together a chronicle of land conservancies and the people behind them since the 1990s. The resulting book, ‘Voices for the Islands, 30 Years Of Nature Conservation On The Salish Sea’ is just being released by Heritage House.
The Forest Trust for the Children of Cortes Island Society (FTCCIS) had its “best year ever” on Giving Tuesday last week, according to chair Chris Dragseth, with $20,000 fundraised.
