“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.
Continue reading Ellingsen Woods search for a value added market— with on the spot reporting, films and photographs from Helen Hall
In recent years, the BC government has made many promises, many representations to the public, about its intent to preserve what little is left of the Province’s old growth forests. Many BC residents, however, feel that — despite the arrival in office of more reality-based politicians such as David Eby — no real progress is being made.
Some of these residents attended a March and Rally in Victoria on February 25th, to express their concerns about deforestation and their frustration with the slowness of government response to what many describe as an ecological crisis. Helen Hall, longtime Cortes resident, traveled to Victoria to participate in this protest.
Continue reading February 25th Rally for Old Growth in Victoria BC
Wild Cortes will be giving a peak of the theme for the upcoming season this Monday, between 1:00 and 3:00.
Curator Donna Collins explained, “It’s a bit of a preview that’s going to be a family day activity. We will be taking the families out into the forest, measuring trees to find a mother tree. Then we’ll also be digging to pull up some of the mychorrhizal networks and looking at them here underneath the stereoscopes. After that, participants will be actually creating their own mitochondrial network that will link to their own tree root. They will be building this themselves. Finally, we will be mimicking the connections that all of these mychorrhizal networks and trees make, by making the connections with string and connecting people.”
Continue reading A taste of the upcoming Season at Wild Cortes
Since late 2021, a small group of Cortes residents has met regularly to discuss climate change and its impacts on our region. On February 4th, 2023, the “WTF Friday” event featured environmental scientist Ruth Waldick; Dr Waldick gave a presentation on climate change, fire risk, and forestry practise.
We may have no control over the weather, but we do have some control over soil moisture, fuel loads and ignition risk.
— Ruth Waldick, Transition Salt Spring
Her presentation covered two main themes: the increase in fire risk created by traditional logging practises in BC, and methods of forest restoration — accessible to private landowners as well as crown land managers — that can reduce the risk of dangerous wildfires in our area.
Continue reading Forests, Fires, and Our Future: Dr Ruth Waldick speaks on climate resilience
“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.
Continue reading Fuel mitigation around the Cortes Recycling Centre
