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General News · 15th March 2024
Mike Moore
In the late 1990s, the forests on Cortes Island felt as though they were under siege. The Ministry of Forests had just granted the industrial logging giant Canfor the cutting rights to the island’s Crown-lands. At around the same time, Mac-Blo/ Weyerhaeuser began selling off parcels of their private forestry lands to gypo loggers and the Bartholemew and Seaford Y cutblocks were the result. It felt as if the Cortes island forests were going to fall just like what was happening on all of the other islands and mainland that surrounded us.

I remember the feeling of community unity and solidarity when we faced off against Mac-Blo, and then Island Timberlands to stop them from clearcutting their private lands. And I remember the joy and optimism we all felt when we signed the first memorandum of understanding in BC between a First Nations and settler community to manage our forests together.

It took many more years of community volunteer work and lobbying before the Cortes Forestry General Partnership was a reality. Again, that feeling of optimism for the future ran high. We as a community could now call the shots on how forestry was to be done on the island Crown-lands. We could consider the well-being of the island, its sensitive habitats,  wildlife corridors, our need for wood products and to keep our sawmills running, the local economy and how we could be an example to other communities of how to do forestry properly.

Like any ecology, community forestry is about relationships. First and foremost is our relationship with the land, how we fit in to the landscape how we use its resources and how we protect them.

The next relationship is between all of us as community members/ neighbours. How we interact with each other and how we pull together for a common cause or how we fall apart, argue and stir the shit amongst ourselves.

And then there’s relationship between the Klahoose First Nation and the settler community; a 50/50 partnership in this endeavour. Like any successful partnership, there’s got to be some give and take and most of all, respect for each side.

Finally, we have the relationship with the Ministry of Forests. MOF grants the community forest tenure AND THEY CAN TAKE IT AWAY! MOF sets an annual cut rate, which has been determined by our community to be ecologically and socially unacceptably high. The partnership walks a fine line between satisfying the MOF’s desire for logs and the community’s desire for conservation. The CFGP only logs a small percentage of the mandated annual cut. If the Partnership does not produce enough logs and benefit to the economy to satisfy the MOF, the community forest tenure could be taken away from us and transferred to a logging corporation that is outside of our community control. What a tragic loss that would be!

Let’s keep all of these relationships in mind when we decide as individuals, how we are going to engage in these issues. A divided community is not strong, our strength is in our commUNITY. Please get involved at the planning level, not at the defensive, reaction level.