Transcript of a radio broadcast by Sabina Leader Mense

Just last weekend several of us were at the Cortes Island Museum for the launch of Sheila Harrington’s new book ‘Voices For The Islands: 30 Years Of Nature Conservation In The Salish Sea.’ What Sheila does in this book is she celebrates this amazing community of conservationists that are living and working in the Salish Sea.  

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. 

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.

When Island Timberlands announced imminent logging plans for their  forest lands in 2009, several of us invited Briony Penn and Mort Ranson to come to Cortes. They were defending forest lands on Salt Spring Island in 1999. Mort is a videographer and produced a fabulous little video called ‘The Money, The Money, The Money.’ We asked Briony and Mort to come to Cortes to show the video,  and  to brainstorm with us and with the community for solutions to how we might conserve some of these lands. One of the sparks that came out of that conversation in 2009 was this idea of a forest in trust to the children.

So that concept was established in 2010. By 2012, we had managed to register ourselves as a B. C. Society, the Forest Trust for the Children of Cortes Island Society. By  2014 we had charitable status and we’ve been hard at it ever since! 

We have engaged Island Timberlands with the goal of purchasing these 624 acres of land. We’re tenacious! We’re in there hanging on, and we have a very dedicated negotiations committee that’s actively engaged with Mosaic Forest Management, who now manage the Island Timberland  forest land base.  

The Forest Trust for the Children of Cortes Island Society has a vision and that vision is twofold. Firstly, we’re setting out to protect in perpetuity natural forest lands on behalf of children and future generations. Secondly, we’re there to nurture relationships between children and nature and to inspire advocacy for the natural world. 

I like to think that this vision would bring a smile to the face of one of North America’s foremost conservation pioneers,  Rachel Carson and I’m hoping that Rachel Carson’s name is familiar to many people. Rachel Carson was basically born an ecologist before the science of ecology was even born. She lived from 1907 to 1964. She was a marine scientist working with the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service and she was  an amazing nature writer. She wrote an exquisite trilogy on the sea and then she blew the whistle on the misuse of organic chemical pesticides that came into widespread use after World War II. She also questioned the human domination of nature in her revolutionary book, ‘Silent Spring,’ and that brought her name forward to the world.

But a little book that she wrote many years later, in 1956,  was actually published after she died. She never finished ‘The Sense of Wonder.’  Again, in this book, Rachel Carson shows how she is way ahead of the game, just in terms of  being a foremost conservationist and in terms of thinking  about nature and its values.

What she wrote about has basically come out in the last 10 to 20 years.  Recent research shows that direct exposure to nature is essential for healthy childhood development, and the physical and emotional health of children. 

My favourite quote is  where Rachel writes, “A child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring, is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood. 

If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things that are artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength.” 

Rachel understood what nature gives us.  For those of us with the Forest Trust for the Children, the Children’s Forest is actually that real place that feeds children’s sense of wonder. We offer place- based experiential education in the forest lands of the Children’s Forest.  

Rachel went on to write,“If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder without any such gift from the fairies,  he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with them the joy, excitement, and mystery of the world we live in.”

Rediscovering, recreating, we recreate. We use the word recreation all the time. It actually means recreate. We recreate our relationship with nature and that’s what we do by conserving lands like the Children’s Forest. What we do is we  conserve places where children can recreate their relationship with the natural world.  

For the last decade, children on Cortes Island have been joining the Forest Trust for the Children of Cortes Island Society on our nature study days in the Children’s Forest. We offer them the first Sunday of every month. And we set them aside for just  sweet, unscheduled time to recreate our relationship  with this forest.

 All these years later, here’s what two of our alumni have to say. They are children who walked with us in the early years of 2010 right up until today, but children from those early years are now young adults. Many of them are pursuing university degrees, and they have come together to form what they call the Forest Trust Alumni. They’re a very bright,  engaged, group of youth. I’d just like to quote from two of them what they have to say about the influence that Children’s Forest had on their lives. 

“The Children’s Forest… played a unique, supportive role in my childhood. It was a place I could go to laugh when I needed to laugh, to cry when I needed to cry, and to clear my head when I needed to think.  I believe that every child benefits from the forest in different ways, but the forest teaches all of us how to BE in nature and imparts the next generation with a sense of stewardship.” 

Another of our alumni writes, “I am currently in my last year of my undergraduate degree… and the Children’s Forest still holds an incredibly important place in my heart.  These natural places, that I was lucky enough to grow up in showed me the importance of connecting with nature and the beauty of learning to live within and along it. I am so proud to be an alumnus of the Forest Trust for the Children of Cortes Island Society and watch younger generations be given the same opportunities as I was. To love and be loved by the forest.” 

To love and be loved by the forest, this is the power of the Children’s Forest! This is the legacy of land conservation! 

Incredibly important  to all of us is the conservation of lands. 

In addition to the primary goal of securing and protecting a place for children to recreate their relationship with nature, the Children’s Forest is also ecologically significant. 

On behalf of the Forest Trust for the Children of Cortes Island Society,  a year ago, I wrote a report on the ecological significance of the Children’s Forest.   Firstly to  inform the valuations of the Children’s Forest that were ongoing at that time, and secondly, to  interest donors who might be looking for places to invest in. 

Many people will remember that in 2022, the United Nations Biodiversity Conference in Montreal set goals for 2030, and one of those goals was that 30 percent of the land and sea be protected by 2030.

The federal government, for example, has just dedicated $50 million to British Columbia for conservation efforts. Agencies that receive those monies are in turn looking for lands that are ecologically significant for conservation. That was one of the reasons for writing this little report, to make people aware of the ecological significance.  I will provide that report,  for people to  review, but I’d just like  to discuss it in terms of concepts keys to conservation.

These concepts are very key to where we’re looking for conservation, and they’re really well illustrated by the Children’s Forest.  

The first  is that  you never look at a  parcel of land in isolation. You always look at that parcel  in context with the greater landscape. That greater landscape could be Cortes, the Pacific Northwest. It could be the planet. 

In our case, when we look at the 624 acres that constitute the Children’s Forest, we need to remember the biggest picture is that those forest lands are part of the coastal temperate rainforests of British Columbia, of the Pacific Northwest, and of the world.  

Coastal temperate rainforests only ever constituted one tenth of one percent of the Earth’s forests, so they are a globally rare ecosystem.  That makes them ecologically significant, right off the mark. Coastal temperate rainforests are the most carbon dense forests In the world. They hold 50 percent of their carbon securely in the ground. That makes them ecologically significant at a global level. 

Cortes Island itself sits right there at 50 degrees north latitude and it is the transition between two major biogeoclimatic zones: to the north, the Coastal Western Hemlock, to the south, the Coastal Douglas Fir. Species and communities/  of  ecological communities are either at the northern edges of their range here or at the southern edges of their range. We have  this very high habitat diversity and species diversity because we have all of these different species coming together at the edges of their range. When you have high habitat diversity and high species diversity in these transitional ecosystems, this provides the most resilience and adaptability in the face of climate change.

Transitional ecosystems are ecologically significant. 

Within this Coastal Western Hemlock biogeoclimatic zone  that we are part of, Cortes Island actually constitutes a subzone of the Coastal Western Hemlock that’s called XM, for Xeric Maritime, which means we’re at the driest end of the Coastal Western Hemlock spectrum.

Cortes Island forest lands, which include the Children’s Forest, actually represent some of the largest remaining undeveloped tracks of what’s called Coastal Western Hemlock, Xeric Maritime 1,  the eastern variant that we have and that  is ecologically significant.

Another concept key to land conservation is this idea of sensitive ecosystems and sensitive ecosystems are defined by the province of British Columbia as ecosystems that are fragile, or rare, or that have very high biodiversity. They often are areas that we call a biodiversity or biological nodes, high biodiversity of species and ecological communities.

In 1999, the Sunshine Coast Forest District, of which Cortes Island is part,  was flown to actually map out where these sensitive ecosystems occur. We have those maps.  Our Cortes Community Forest works  with those maps.  What we see is that the north end of Cortes, where the Children’s Forest is contained, is this really amazing, complex tapestry of sensitive ecosystems. Those sensitive ecosystems are called: herbaceous (HB), these are the high bluffs where we walk amidst the Arbutus and the Manzanita, with less than 10 percent tree cover. The woodland (WD) areas below the bluffs transition into the forest. We have  small pockets  of true old growth forest (OF), and we have beautiful riparian (RI) areas. Riparian areas are all those areas that travel along the edges of waterways or wetlands. Then we have wetlands (WN) themselves as sensitive ecosystems.  Within this Xeric Maritime, very dry Coastal Western Hemlock zone that we have, wetlands are really rare and so exceptionally ecologically significant to us. 

What they classify as, ‘another important ecosystem’ are the mature forests (MF), or the second growth forests  that make up the bulk of the Cortes Island forests. These forests actually buffer the sensitive ecosystems, which many are left as little oases, very distinct from one another. So the mature forests actually buffer and connect these sensitive ecosystems over the larger landscape. These forests are also essential areas for what we call, ‘old growth recruitment’. So how are we ever going to get more old growth? By letting these second growth forests grow to old age and develop the characteristics of old growth forests.  So all of these sensitive ecosystems are mapped for Cortes Island and specifically we look at them for the Children’s Forest. 

These biodiversity nodes, as we call them, have a very high degree, or a high percentage of species and ecological communities that are listed at risk and species at risk are designated again by the provincial government here in British Columbia. The Conservation Data Centre (CDC) is the repository of this information. 

In this little ecological report, I document and have written down that we have in the Children’s Forest specifically 14 ‘species at risk.’ Some of those species people will recognize, because they’ve seen them. They include the Northern Goshawk, the Northern Pygmy-owl, Great Blue Heron, Northern Red-legged Frog and Threaded Vertigo. 

We have 11 distinct ecological communities that are listed ‘at risk.’ Things like: Douglas-fir/ lodgepole pine/ grey rock-moss and western redcedar/ three-leaved foamflower. I refer people to that report so if they’re really interested, they can see how much diversity there is within this very special group of ecological communities and species that are at risk.

 Another key concept to land conservation is something called ecological connectivity. We never look at parcels just by themselves and instead look at the connections between them and among them. How are these protected areas connected to one another?  This is a brand new science in the last 20 years. It’s called connectivity conservation and connectivity conservation is a direct countermeasure to the fragmentation of land. 

A brilliant analogy to fragmentation of land that I share with a lot of people comes from  a little essay by David Quammen in his book Song of the Dodo, and he calls it  the Persian Carpet.

David says that if you take an absolutely, exquisitely beautiful Persian carpet, 12 feet by 18 feet, people are looking at it. They fall in love with it.  He says, ‘why don’t we share it with everybody?’ We’ve got 36 people here who want to share the beauty of this Persian carpet. So  let’s cut it up into 36 equal pieces.  In this essay, he took a knife and cut this Persian carpet into 36 individual pieces.  In the background, he can hear the Persian weavers screaming as the knife starts cutting this Persian carpet apart. He ends up with 36 pieces and he holds them up . Everyone’s to get  one piece of this beautiful Persian carpet. They’re unraveling at the edges. They’re falling apart. They’re absolutely worthless.  It’s exactly what happens when you fragment land and you continue to subdivide and fragment up the land. 

Connectivity conservation  talks about staving off biodiversity loss and providing greater resilience to climate change by keeping the land together, connecting the land. I often say land conservation is a lot about stitching back together the subdivisions of land. 

The Children’s Forest was a very intentional act to ensure intact landscape connectivity across a greater area by choosing lands that fell directly beneath the Carrington Bay Park.  This is our Regional District Park. Carrington Bay Park is about 868 acres and right up underneath it comes the Children’s Forest at 624 acres. So we get a landscape level ecological network being preserved there.

In the epilogue for the report I wrote, the Forest Trust for the Children of Cortes Island Society is pursuing the purchase of the Children’s Forest in order to place these lands in trust to future generations of children. Upon purchase of the Children’s Forest, we will be registering a conservation covenant so that the lands will be provided long term protection (ie – in perpetuity). This is an act of landscape level conservation during one of human history’s most dramatic changes in climate. It is one of the most proactive measures that can be taken to enhance the resilience of these lands in supporting and maintaining their exceptional ecological significance well into the future. And I ended the report by saying, 

‘Imagine … a forest in trust to the children,’ which is the society’s mantra.

As I was rereading that the other day, I flashed back to how Briony ended her forward to Sheila’s book, ‘Voices for the Islands.’ Briony was quoting a man by the name of William Rees from UBC, who is one of the people who coined the term ‘ecological footprint.’ 

William Rees wrote, “This is not a climate or a biodiversity crisis, it is a behavioral crisis and the solution is to heal our connection to the land that supports us.”  

Briony followed that by writing, “We are at a time in history when it is essential that we work together to respect and heal the land and ourselves.”  

I had to grin when I read that, realizing that, Imagining…  a forest in trust to the children, is a very powerful example of  working together to respect and heal the land and ourselves!

I would encourage all Cortesians to check out the work of the Forest Trust for the Children of Cortes Island Society. We have a website, https://www.corteschildrensforesttrust.org/. You can reach out to any of the directors at any time directors@corteschildrensforesttrust.org.

We have a dossier that we’ve just updated in 2024. You could request that if you have friends that might be interested in donating and supporting the purchase of the Children’s Forest. 

The Cortes Wild feature display this year at the Linnaea Education Centre is ‘Imagine… A Forest In Trust To The Children.’ You can catch up on more of the projects that we’re engaged in and how to become involved. 

Consider that every Christmas stocking coming up should have a copy of  ‘Forest Alphabet,’ the little book written by the youth of Cortes in 2010. It was published in 2014.  I’m sure the youth will be selling those at the Friday Markets. You can catch up on their work and their continued dedication to a forest that they named the Children’s Forest. 

It’s the most exciting conservation project on Cortes Island right now. Everybody can be an important part of that, and we invite everyone to join in.

Links of Interest:

• Ecological Significance of the Children’s Forest – by Sabina Leader Mense
• Forest Trust for the Children of Cortes Island website
• Purchase the Forest Alphabet
• Email the Directors of the Children’s Forest
• Articles about, or mentioning, the Children’s Forest

Sign-up for Cortes Currents email-out:

To receive an emailed catalogue of articles on Cortes Currents, send a (blank) email to subscribe to your desired frequency:

• Daily, (articles posted during the last 24 hours) – cortescurrents-daily+subscribe@cortes.groups.io
• Weekly Digest cortescurrents – cortescurrents-weekly+subscribe@cortes.groups.io