Most rural communities in BC live in and amongst forests managed by distant companies with licenses from the province to log. Those communities don’t really have a say in how their forests are managed.

We are very fortunate to have a community managed forest here on Cortes. This was achieved after decades of work by dedicated community members from the Klahoose Nation and among the non-indigenous community. The result is the Cortes Forestry General Partnership, which has three members from the Klahoose Nation and three from the Community Forest Coop Board. I am honored to serve as a volunteer on both of those entities. They are made-up of people who love Cortes and who work diligently to collaboratively manage the 35% of Cortes that they are responsible for stewarding.

After months of consultation, the Cortes Forestry General Partnership began work on a road to enable forest fire mitigation and future lumber harvesting in an area close to the works-yard. I was disappointed that several neighbors of the project chose to stop work on the road building by blockading our crews. I have been even more disappointed by the racism that is being expressed by some members of our community against this project and the Klahoose First Nation. The Cortes Forestry General Partnership is an example of reconciliation in action and we have no tolerance for racism.

As many of us know, the project is the result of years worth of consultation, work, and consensus based decision making between the members of the Cortes Forestry General Partnership. These projects are being undertaken on the unceded territory of the Klahoose Nation, local sawmills are given priority of use of the lumber and that 100% of the proceeds of these projects are kept on Cortes, either by the Klahoose Nation, or by the Community Forest Coop, which are used to support local initiatives.

I hope that Cortes residents stay involved and up to speed on the work of the Cortes Forestry General Partnership by joining the annual general meeting, or on our website: http://www.cortesforestrypartnership.com/ and that you get involved in our initiatives to distribute firewood to seniors or in other ways. We all love this island and this land, but disrupting work underway on our project sites isn’t an ok way to express that love and doesn’t do justice to the years community based stewardship that went into this and other initiatives.