Category Archives: Forests

Enviro groups say Canada’s climate goals are based on flawed forest carbon accounting

By Natasha Bulowski, Canada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Last week, the federal government announced Canada’s 2020 greenhouse gas emissions dropped, in part thanks to trees removing carbon from the atmosphere. However, environmentalists are quick to point out this calculation excludes a huge chunk of emissions from the logging industry.

Nearly seven megatonnes of CO2 were removed by the land use and forest sector, an amount that reduced the country’s total emissions by one per cent, according to the federal government. Environmental groups, however, say the sector’s true GHG emissions are underreported by a staggering amount — approximately 80 million tonnes of CO2 each year.

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Cortes Island tree-lovers prepare to tussle with logging giant

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.”

Continue reading Cortes Island tree-lovers prepare to tussle with logging giant

Mosaic visits Cortes Island: A community meeting and forest walk

There were two public forestry events, while Mosaic visited Cortes Island this week.  

About 135 people attended the mixed in-person/ZOOM ‘Celebrating our Forests’ meeting at Mansons Hall on the evening of April 20, 2022. 

Around 16 people joined Mosaic on at least one of the two field walks of proposed cutblocks the following day. (Someone* went on both trips.)

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Letter to Mosaic, from FOCI

Hello Colin Koszman and Molly Hudson, representatives of Mosaic:

In the face of a climate emergency and the accelerating loss of biodiversity, the Friends of Cortes Island Society (FOCI) has serious concerns regarding Mosaic’s current plans to cut ecologically significant forests on Cortes. We would like to see Mosaic join the efforts of the Cortes community to create an alternative model for forestry that would sustain the environment and local communities over the long term, rather than spend our time and energy in opposition.

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Delores Broten: the 1990 logging blockade, FOCI and origins of the Watershed Sentinel

The Friends of Cortes Island (FOCI) was talked about in the past tense, when Delores Broten and Don Malcom moved to Cortes in 1987. In the first of a series of posts about the origins of FOCI, Broten talks about the 1990 logging blockade that inspired FOCI’s rebirth, and led to the award-winning environmental magazine ‘the Watershed Sentinel.’

Continue reading Delores Broten: the 1990 logging blockade, FOCI and origins of the Watershed Sentinel