Tag Archives: Mosaic on Cortes

Forests

On Cortes Island, it’s all songs and warm vibes until the logging begins

National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

The Cortes Islanders smiling, singing, and snacking outside the Gorge Harbour clapboard community hall might have been gathered for a spring picnic — if it weren’t for the sizable collection of anti-logging protest signs pitched across the lawn. 

Any collective cheer quickly dissipated and anger bubbled up in the crowd on Tuesday afternoon when Mosaic Forest Management representatives began to outline draft plans for logging operations on the small B.C. island over the next three years

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Forests

Mosaic/IT Open House at Gorge Hall

On Tuesday May 17th, a group of Mosaic (Island Timberlands / TimberWest) employees travelled to Cortes Island to host an “open house” at the Gorge Hall. They set up displays indoors and offered a casual one-on-one discussion period from 10AM to noon; at noon, they made a formal presentation which — thanks to improving weather — was held outdoors for better Covid safety.

Mosaic’s displays inside Gorge Hall

Mosaic’s plans to resume industrial logging on Cortes Island are controversial and have already inspired a petition-style letter and a series of community meetings. Mosaic has received significant feedback from the community challenging their cut plan on various grounds, including location (cutting within the boundaries of sensitive ecosystems) and extraction rate (several times the rate recommended and practised by the Cortes Community Forest).

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Forests, Opinion

Timber Industry Feeling the Heat?

[OPINION/EDITORIAL] Public opinion and Federal and Provincial policy are finally swinging (at the eleventh hour) towards protection of the pathetic remnants of BC’s old growth forest and possibly some reform of forest management practise. In response, the timber/pulp industry appears to be mounting a last-ditch PR effort to defend its traditional extractive model and discredit its most vocal critics.

One fingerprint of this effort can be found in a recent Times-Colonist opinion/editorial by Alice Palmer. Published on April 20th, the article reassures readers that

The supposed “fact” that less than three per cent of B.C.’s productive old growth remains standing, and the implicit suggestion that we’re about to lose that too, are both patently untrue.

There is actually much more old growth left, and the majority of it is protected from logging.

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Forests

Cortes Island tree-lovers prepare to tussle with logging giant

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Click here for ‘Mosaic visits Cortes Island: A community meeting and forest walk‘

National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Lisa Ferentinos wades through underbrush and clambers up a rock bluff before descending into a small ravine dominated by a cluster of old-growth cedars cloaked in moss and lichen.

The Cortes Island resident surveys the small stand of West Coast giants and sighs. 

“I get sad thinking they might be gone soon,” Ferentinos said. “But then I decide that’s just not going to happen.”

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