With its shallow watered tidal lagoon and long sandy spit, Mansons Landing Provincial Park is one of Cortes Island’s most treasured tourist spots. It is also the home of several plant species not found in many places along the coast, as well as forage fish, biodiverse marine life and birds. Friends of Cortes Island (FOCI) have been helping BC Parks maintain this location since 2016.
Continue reading Friends of Cortes Island at Mansons Landing Provincial Park
With the Friends of Cortes Island (FOCI) AGM coming up on November 28, it seemed like an ideal time to ask Executive Director Helen Hall what the society achieved in 2023.
“We’re actually doing 14 different projects, which involve everything from habitat restoration and conservation through to environmental monitoring and community education. I just wanted to highlight some of those projects,”she explained.
Continue reading What FOCI Achieved in 2023
“The best overview of the FOCI’s Marine Stewardship Initiative (MSI), the absolute best overview in a nutshell, is an Arthur C Clarke’s quote. It’s the mantra of the MSI. Arthur C. Clarke wrote ‘How inappropriate to call this Planet Earth when it is quite clearly Ocean.’ That is, in a nutshell, the Marine Stewardship Initiative,” explained Sabina Leader Mense, Program coordinator.
Continue reading FOCI’s Marine Stewardship InitiativeFriends of Cortes Island (FOCI) recently had its AGM. This is also Helen Hall’s seventh year as Executive Director. So Cortes Currents asked her for an overview of this past year and how the organization has changed during her tenure.
Helen Hall: “That’s a big question, FOCI has always been doing a lot of different projects. I act as the central point for FOCI, but there’s a lot of work going on with volunteers and our contractors.”
Continue reading This past year at FOCI, an interview with Helen Hall
“A lot of the places people want to go and visit are either down a beach access or they are a park. We’ve got large areas of unfragmented forest in Ha’thayim or Von Donop Park. Mansons Landing Provincial Park is a really bio-diverse lagoon full of marine life. Those parks together make up quite a big parcel of land that’s set aside for conservation and for nature to thrive. There’s no development pressure, that’s really important. We have those permanent resources protected, and obviously there’s a lot of really interesting ecosystems in them too,” explained Helen Hall, Executive Director of the Friends of Cortes Island (FOCI).
Continue reading FOCI: Maintaining Cortes Island’s Regional parks
