AcorntheThe Newsletter of the Salt Spring Island Conservancy Number 34, Spring 2007

http://saltspringconservancy.ca

Inside:President’s Page .................2Director’s Desk ..................3Natural History Sustainability .................4Events Calendar .........................6 Event Notes ....................6Features Mt Erskine Prov Park ......7 Islands, Harbours .........11 Inside SSIC Cusheon Lake .................8 Dorothy Cutting .............8 Nominating ..................12 Imagine Salt Spring .......13Stewardship NAPTEP .......................10 Essential Details ..............15

TWO New School Program Coordinators

HiredIn the last issue of the Acorn we announced, in an article entitled, “They Need More of This”, we had received funding that would allow us to continue with the Stewards in Training School Program for 2007 thanks to the BC Gaming Commission and a wonderful Conservancy member/donor. This program takes students one class at a time, on full day, hands-on field experiences and teaches them about different Salt Spring ecosystems. We are pleased to announce that we have hired not one but two wonderfully talented women to coordinate our successful school program. We feel extremely lucky to be able to welcome them “on board”.

The Conservancy is pleased to introduce you to Sarah Bateman and Cate McEwen:

Sarah is well suited for this position because two of her passions are teaching children and learning about our natural world. She moved to Salt Spring in 1988 from Nova Scotia. She spent her childhood in Ontario playing outdoors in the fields and streams near her home with a family that was very focused on experiencing and appreciating nature. She has degrees in Anthropology/Psychology and Education from the University of Victoria and she has enjoyed traveling with her family in North America, Europe and Africa. Sarah is a BC certified teacher who is well known in our elementary schools -- she has taught grades K – 8 as a teacher on call while raising her two children who are now 9 and 11. Sarah loves working in the classroom and out in the field. She also

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� The Acorn - Newsletter of the Salt Spring Island Conservancy

Mom’s at her computer when the curtains in the den flap inward. She closes the window. Melissa, age 8, pins down a wayward painting with her felt pen when a lion-sized cats-paw blows through patio screens. She tugs the sliding glass door shut. Dozing over an open book, Dad coughs as a fist of air pummels down the chimney. He closes the damper.

Same wind. Same house. Different perceptions. Different responses. Other doors and windows are still open. The storm still rises.

Shift image. Earth is the house. It is getting too hot. What’s the problem?

That – the question – is the first problem.In the 1980s colleagues of mine at the University

of Alaska mulled over new evidence of a changing world climate. What they knew worried them, but mainly they focused on our ignorance. It was a research problem.

As a biologist I agreed, but as an environmental activist disappearing ice packs, increasing wildfire and melting of ancient permafrost translated into an environmental problem. Nature was going to suffer more than we were.

A British economist gained instant fame recently by telling us how many trillions of dollars would have to be spent on protection against coastal flooding, frequent droughts, all sorts of extreme weather: you know the drill. Now we have an economic problem.

Current politicos are hooked into big business, the Alberta tar sands boom, and the petro-economy generally. They have their careers (and elections) to lose if they don’t deliver on promises made in traditional priorities like health care, jobs, child poverty and education. Proposals to act on global warming scare everybody whose ox would be gored or whose share of tax revenues is threatened. The clear course is to sit tight – except that so many people oppose doing nothing. It is a political problem.

It is really a problem in social justice, others say. Rich and poor both live by the sea, but history suggests that money will be spent to protect the rich and the works that they profit from. The poor, it is to be hoped, will have time to move.

Or is it an issue of basic human behaviour, channelled for 200 years toward individual achievement, materialism and self-maximising market behaviour?

Enough already!The real problem (now I’m in the cellar listening to the

wind whistling through cracks in the foundation) is the way we think about problems. We see them as chains of cause and effect, short chains truncated by our disinterest in the past and by our content with an agreeable next step rather than a long trek to a more distant goal.

Here’s an exercise to show a more realistic model. Stand over a big sheet of white paper. Shake flakes of pepper on it.

With a pencil connect all nearest-neighbour flakes, then all neighbours once removed. Drop a dart onto the paper. The nearest flake is global warming. (Call it effect or cause, it’s all the same.) Tell me what causes it. You still pass even if you don’t travel as far as the Amazonian butterfly sneezing from excess pepper.

We think in chains far more often than nets. It’s simpler, more practical. Someone often is rewarded in the short run.

Review the sequence for global warming. In the 1980s scientists talked about what little they knew and what they wanted money to find out. Leaders tittered. More was learned but apprehension within “the establishment” strengthened to denial in the ‘90s. Scientists became more confident, described the consequences in increasingly painful terms. Today most folks would say the problem is real, caused by too much atmospheric CO2; the excess is partly caused by petroleum-fuelled engines and bad coal-burning methods; we should invent ways to reduce emissions. Scrub carbon out of smokestacks. Replace diesel and gasoline engines with electric, hydrogen or hybrid power sources in cars. After a while the air will be cleaner.

Technoproblem, technofix. Who’s surprised? We are surrounded by and imbedded

in technology. We earn money to buy it and make a living from inventing, building and selling it. We occasionally wince at its failures but are confident that new designs will correct them. Our biggest fear is an inconvenient and possibly expensive transition. (We made it from quarter-horse to hundred-horse a century ago, but to abandon private gas-guzzlers? Horrors!) The corporate sector usually protests change but knows from experience that they could, if nimble, come out ahead.

Looking a bit deeper, we see that the technofix strategy leaves economic and political power right where it is. The public stays hooked, investors still gamble, money is still made. A few political dinosaurs lose at the ballot box and some channels of campaign support dry up but the mutually beneficial understandings that bind politics, business and consumers remain.

Trouble is, narrow actions yield narrow gains. They leave most of the networked complex of elements in “the problem” completely untouched. The net gain may prove to be zero or less.

Take the no-emissions car, for example. I’d love to see the world’s fleet comprised of clean vehicles. Compared to the tiny gains from the tussle for better mileage between 1970 and 2006, it would be party time. However, it might be prudent to plan a few wakes as well. No-emissions vehicles would leave unshaken our self-granted right to zip around Earth’s surface at will on our errands of convenience. We would continue

Strong Wind Blowing President’s Page

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�Spring 2007

Busy Year AheadWe begin 2007 with the support of our members and community at an all time high with 850 Conservancy members, an increase of 125 members in the past year. Thank you to all of our members and donors for your support, and a warm welcome to all of our new members. 2006 was another busy year for the Conservancy. Many of our regular monthly educational events were sold-out, including our 2nd Sustainable Home Building Forum. With the assistance of the Salt Spring Earth Festival Society, the Forum and the second annual Salt Spring Eco-Home Tour were an overwhelming success with 650 participants on tours to ten Eco-Homes led by local homeowners.

In addition to these events, we successfully completed two projects this year; the first was a Species at Risk Stewardship Project, which focused on the protection of locally endangered and threatened species and ecosystems. We received funding from the Salt Spring Island Foundation, Bullitt Foundation, and the Government of Canada Habitat Stewardship Program for Species at Risk for our “Habitat Protection and Stewardship of Species at Risk on Salt Spring 2006” project. This project allowed the Conservancy to do vital inventories of Species at Risk on Salt Spring by working with local landowners. Islanders learned how to identify habitats on their land through site visits, and protect their land through stewardship agreements and land management plans. Rare species locations were verified and four new Sharp-tailed Snake populations were found. The project contacted 162 residents with Garry oak ecosystems and Species at Risk on their land, and completed 85 site visits. We worked closely with our partner organizations, such as the Garry Oak Ecosystems Recovery Team (GOERT). The project hired Robin Annschild as Project Biologist and Christian Engelstoft, Sharp-tailed Snake Biologist, who verified snake sighting with landowners and gave presentations.

The second project was a ‘Stewards in Training’ program, funded by a local donor, the Wildlife Federation, and the Shell Environmental Fund. Coordinators Kate Leslie and Deborah Miller continued ecological field trips with Gulf Island Middle School students and this year added all of Salt Spring’s Grade four and five students. 525 students were led by 60 adult volunteers on guided hikes and interactive hands-on activities, about ecology, succession, and common and endangered plants. Students went to the Conservancy’s 72-acre Andreas Vogt Nature Reserve and Channel Ridge for Garry oak stewardship activities, Ford Lake for wetland activities, and Burgoyne Bay for seashore activities. Students removed invasive species, and identified ecosystems and plants. Sarah Bateman and Kate McEwen have been hired as program Coordinators for the 2007 Stewards in Training which will begin this spring.

I would like to acknowledge the hard work of our staff members this year: Robin Annschild, our staff Biologist and our office assistants Linda Horsfall and Sabrina Aven. My sincere gratitude to all of the hardworking volunteers last year who helped at education events, the Saturday market, the fall fair, and the Eco Home Tour and forum; our office helpers, the Board of Directors, committee members, project advisors, volunteer stewards, and everyone who helped in any way. Thanks to Linda Quiring and Bill Goddu for the refrigerator.

2007 will see the Conservancy running a third Eco-Home Tour on June 17, a garage sale, a musical event, and another Stewardship project if funded. The Fundraising committee has decided not to raffle a bench this year, but we still hope to be at the Saturday market with information about stewardship and the Eco-Home Tour.– Karen Hudson

Sharp-tailed Snake

Director’s Desk

Founding member Ann Richardson and Lugh Annschild assist with violet research

� The Acorn - Newsletter of the Salt Spring Island Conservancy

Preludes to SustainabilityWhen I need cheering up I can rattle a few bonbons out of almost any newspaper. Tucked among columns of war and tragedy I’ll see a note about an inventor or entrepreneur trying a greener idea. Sunday editions can be a trove (hard news apparently never happens on Sunday), highlighting sustainable city design, sustainable tourism, sustainable transportation, forestry or farming, green architecture, even the bemusing offers of sustainable growth.

Eventually the chocolate high fades. A few of the projects turn out to be green paint on a rusty idea: someone hoping to cash in on small change and big hoopla. A few are solid successes, like second-generation stewards of organic farms and selectively harvested woodlots. Most, it seems to me, are well meant but both untested and narrowly limited.

Think, for instance, of a new city conference centre featuring the best green design. It has state-of-the-art structural materials, it is snugged against a good public transportation system, and it will use far less energy and water than the 20th Century dinosaur it replaces. But the project still wobbles on foundations of sand. Its financial success depends on more growth in a city that already is far too big, part of the global urban-growth bubble. Make-or-break users will fly in from far away, adding to the gassy shield under which we’re already overheating. The project is snared in the global grid: power from dams far up-country, banquet food from thousands of kilometres away, material from distant mines and factories.

Or, suppose you want to fish for a living, sustainably. You build a sailboat that uses solar panels for heat and refrigeration, wind for lights. You are careful of all the details, like nets that degrade innocuously after reasonable use. Still, you’ve financed the idea with money earned or borrowed from the common economy; you sell through chains of processors, packagers and distributors immersed in our petroleum-greased system. Your customers will pay the price of good food with earnings from the everyday, unsustainable economy. Meanwhile, the ocean under your boat continues to degrade under the assault of poisons and overfishing.

My hat is off to every experiment in sustainable living, but what will it take to link your venture with millions of others into an enduring web? Like the late J. Swift, I have a modest proposal: six steps toward global sustainability. None is impossible, though several are a bit daunting.

Peace. Makers of war come and go, win and lose, but war is always against nature. The vortex of war robs resources from human and environmental betterment and spews out a legacy of hatred given teeth by new technologies of aggression. War, directly destroying nature, also releases society from the peacetime restraints meant to protect it. War makes an enduring society and continued life for other creatures impossible.

Fewer People. Six-point-something billion people – 600 billion pounds of appetite - are more than Earth can bear. Two billion could live better, more equivalently to each other, and less desperately close to the brink of disaster, than we do now. Our companions, the creatures of land and sea, would breathe easier. I came across a horrifying estimate recently of how thoroughly humans have displaced nature. At the start of the agricultural age, 6000 to 8000 BC, people and their stock comprised 2% of the biomass of vertebrates on land. Now we, our pets and livestock amount to 98% of land vertebrates biomass.

Smaller Cities. A bigger share of population reduction should come from big cities than from towns and rural areas. City people don’t think or know much about nature – they are told it isn’t of concern – and the bigger the city the deeper the alienation. No society can endure with so vast an ignorance about its home, or so flimsy an emotional and spiritual attachment to the reality that props up their existence. Moreover, cities must, and do, dominate landscapes. Their lives depend on it. Control of rural places lets cities accumulate profits to build and maintain the infrastructure of their survival as well as the cultural wealth that is their justifiable pride. Today’s megalopolis not only dominates local and regional landscapes but many others half a globe away about which they have no concern beyond utility. Smaller cities look closer for resources, creating better conditions for essential city-country partnerships based on shared local experience.

Redesigned Economies. Modern economies need more and more customers every week, an incredibly silly foundation for human or nature’s welfare. A sustainable economy has to be jerked away from growth and greed. Competent economists have been thinking about this for some time now: the names Boulding, Schumacher, Mishan, Daly and Henderson come to mind. So far they have been ignored. I could only shake my head when the 2006 Nobel Prize in economics went to an academic who commented that continued growth was the sine qua non of a successful economy.

Land Tenure. We buy land and treat it as our exclusive property. The community then taxes it as if it were yielding the highest monetary returns possible under local conditions. Owners and community can think only of the short term. Neither sees land in its precious and complex wholeness but as isolated elements of immediate value. Land as geography will outlast humanity, but land as a living entity in full, evolving and productive beauty is fast disappearing. In any enduring relationship the land should make us humble, not the reverse.

Science and Technology. Science can be a good thing but lately it has run with the wolves. The “wolves” (my apologies,

Natural History

�Spring 2007

Canis lupus) pay for science that produces technologies yielding power and profit, an alliance that produces a lot of mischief. Neither the priorities of science nor the long-term consequences of technologies have been subject to effective veto by broad community welfare; we don’t know how to, or don’t want to, the evidence tells us. With each invention the springboard for dozens more, change has far outdistanced good sense. Sustainability at heart is not a condition but an ability to adapt. The precious necessity for either cultural or biological evolution is time, precisely what unbridled technology steals from us.

Science as an ideology is arrogant, denying spirit, soul, mystery and the divine in favor of mechanism. Science, I think, has to be re-conceived as an endeavour of the whole human, not just the rational fragment of our selves. As Roszak put it, science must become sacred. Most scientists, I think would join the enterprise.

So here you are: six steps to the threshold of the great adventure, the conscious invention of sustainable life. How are they to be taken?

If doom-mongers are right, we could just wait and see what survives the inevitable collapse. Too risky. Besides, I’m not suited to standing around and waiting.

Think back to the bonbons. Flawed as they may be, each project represents people convinced of the need to change and of the broad direction it has to take. Someone in another era spoke of such people as “a thousand points of light.” From what I’ve read there are, today, tens or hundreds

Eco-Home Tour

of millions of them. If they didn’t all want to save electricity they would light up the night sky.

We should remember the prophetic reforms of a generation ago that still engage the hearts of many. Do you recall Roszak’s counterculture (1969), Reich’s greening of America (1970) or Schumacher’s discovery of beauty in smallness? A full generation of practice has improved and invigorated the permaculture vision of Mollett and Holmgren back in 1978. Remember Ferguson’s “Aquarian Conspiracy” (1980), modelling a networked, not hierarchical, society? How about bioregionalism, promoted by Gary Snyder’s poetry, Kirkpatrick Sale’s essays and Peter Berg’s organizations?

“They’ve disappeared,” you say.“Because they aren’t media novelties any more,” I reply,

“Not because they are dead.”“But,” you snap back, “they haven’t made any

difference.”“Have you looked?” I ask.I find something positive and important in the fact that

the lights now newly aglow aren’t part of a grid. They don’t even have a grand idea in common beyond the rudimentary feeling that the forces of big power are making shambles everywhere, and that local initiative is the way to change. Local means diverse; in nature and culture diversity trumps sameness every time. Moreover, suppose a centrally-controlled movement were to confront globalization, each with a framed ideology, dogma and top-down control. The result would be a bullfight. No matter which combatant won,

it would be a bull.History has been

too full of bullfights. Let thousands of ideas have their day on home turf. Some will succeed and spread as far as they work in new country.

The bigness responsible for our present fix, never confronted, will crumble away. There will be pain in the failure of “small” but the pain will be local, an experience that produces another try.

I heard a metaphor for this not long ago. “Goliath may dodge a silver bullet, but he can’t escape a bunch of BBs.”– Bob Weeden

� The Acorn - Newsletter of the Salt Spring Island Conservancy

Event NotesConservancy Events

February 23rd (Friday): Mystery Mammals of the Night: Bats of the Gulf Islands with Mammalogist, David Nagorsen, co-author of Bats of British Columbia. Bats are remarkable, but mysterious animals. With ten species inhabiting the Gulf Islands, bats are our most diverse mammals. 7pm at the Lion’s Hall. To make bat house kits: Deborah Miller (537-4797).

March 9th (Friday): Natural Areas Protection Tax Exemption Program talk. Kate Emmings of the Islands Trust Fund will explain how to get a 65% property tax reduction on your land with a conservation covenant. 2 – 4pm at the Lions Hall.

March 22nd (Thursday): Protecting our Water. On World Water Day we are co-sponsoring an event with SSI Water Preservation Society and the Cusheon Lake Stewardship Committee for a Cusheon Lake Management Plan presentation. 1-3pm at the Green Room, Harbour House.

April 19th (Thursday): Solutions to Global Climate Change Slide show and talk by Guy Dauncey author of Stormy Weather: 101 Solutions to Global Climate Change. We are co-sponsoring with I-SEA, and SSI Energy Strategy. 7:30 - 9:30pm, Community Gospel Chapel

May 11th (Friday): Salt Spring Island Conservancy Annual General Meeting. AGM with guest speaker Blair Hammond, Canadian Wildlife Service, Environment Canada, who will speak about Eco-Gifts. 7pm, Lion’s Hall.

Upcoming EventsMammals of the Night: Bats of the Gulf Islands

David NagorsenMammalia Biological Consulting

Bats are remarkable, but mysterious animals of the night. With ten species inhabiting the Gulf Islands and nearby Vancouver Island, bats are actually our most diverse group of land mammals. Yet despite this diversity, few people are aware of bats and their habits. Many people find bats threatening, frightening, or even demonic.

On February 24, Dr. David Nagorsen will provide an illustrated presentation about the bats of British Columbia, with a focus on Salt Spring and the Southern Gulf Islands. Dr. Nagorsen is the author of Bats of British Columbia (a Royal British Columbia Museum Handbook) and is currently a consulting scientist in the field of mammalogy.

In his talk, Nagorsen will dispel many of the myths and misinformation associated with these ecologically valuable animals. Using slides, recorded sounds, and personal stories from his many years of research as a Curator with the Royal B.C. Museum, Nagorsen will reveal many aspects of bat natural history including their ability to fly, their use of sonar to navigate and track prey, where they roost, and how and where they hibernate in winter.

Bats are of special concern as indicators of the health of ecosystems. Nearly half of British Columbia’s bat species are considered to be at risk or of conservation concern by the Provincial Conservation Data Centre. Dr. Nagorsen’s talk will explore the various threats to bats, and a variety of conservation measures including the construction of bat houses and bat–friendly methods for exclusion from buildings.

The presentation is on February 23, at 7:00 pm in the Lion’s Hall.

Third Annual Eco-Home TourJune 17th

The Eco-Home Tour will be held on June 17th from 10am to 4pm. Plan now for this unique opportunity to visit ten of Salt Spring’s eco-homes.

�Spring 2007

Features

Mount Erskine Provincial ParkAnnouncing Mount Erskine Provincial Park: Salt Spring’s Fourth Provincial Park

Cabinet approval has recently been given for the establishment of Mount Erskine Park on Salt Spring Island, and the Province will vote on legislation of the park boundaries when the provincial government sits again this spring. This fulfils the hopes many of us had during the Conservancy campaign in 2005. This new provincial park encompasses the 40 ha summit property and the two adjacent Crown land parcels which, although owned by the public, were not designated as park at that time and thus were potentially at risk.

When the opportunity first arose in late 2004 for the Conservancy to purchase the summit property, we realized that this key parcel was critical to the protection of significant natural features on Mount Erskine. The Conservancy had already acquired a 20 ha parcel on the southeast edge of the Crown lands, and the Islands Trust Fund held a 22 ha property to the north.

During the Conservancy’s very successful private fund-raising campaign, the Nature Conservancy of Canada agreed to contribute funds through the provincial Trust for Public Lands program for a 20 percent interest in the land. We also realized (with some persuasion) that the participation by BC Parks in the purchase of the summit property would enhance our goal of protecting the Crown lands as part of a new provincial park. Accordingly, we reached agreement for the contribution of government funds and a 20 percent interest by BC Parks in the ownership of the land.

The final agreement was reached with BC Parks for their long-term lease of the 40 ha parcel with their assurance that they would use their best efforts to secure the adjacent Crown lands as part of a new Category 1 park. This has now been achieved. Once the boundaries of the park are secured by an act of legislation, Mt. Erskine’s status as park is unlikely to be changed by future governments.

Today we can celebrate the creation of a new 107 ha (268 acre) Provincial Park in the northern part of Salt Spring thanks to the many islanders who generously made donations and contributed their time and energy to the Conservancy campaign as well as to BC Parks for ensuring that these significant pieces of Crown land will be protected in perpetuity. With the Conservancy’s Manzanita Ridge (20 ha) and the Islands Trust Fund Mt. Erskine Nature Reserve (22 ha), the northern part of Salt Spring now has a green area that is almost 150 ha (400 acres), with trails connecting Collins Road to Toynbee Road that islanders can use forever.– Peter Lamb, Charles Kahn and Jean Gelwicks

Photos by Gordon White

� The Acorn - Newsletter of the Salt Spring Island Conservancy

Robert Frost mused about a time in our continent’s history, a time arguably not past, when European colonizers claimed possession of the land but were not yet possessed by it. Owning land, we act upon it as seems in our best interest. We expect a return: copper, cabbages or Kleenex. Possessed by land – making room for it in our heart of hearts – we give part of ourselves to it without expectation of personal gain.

Some of the people who rise each morning to watch the shimmering reflections on Cusheon Lake clearly feel possessed by the Lake’s lively beauty.

You know Cusheon Lake, cupped by two modest ridges, the place where a raindrop from mid Island highlands stops a while before going home to Cusheon Outlet, half-way up Ganges Harbour. (It doesn’t stay long, a year or so, because the Lake gets more incoming water than St. Mary Lake but has only 1/15th of St. Mary’s volume.) A well-used road skirts Cusheon Lake’s northeast shore almost at the stoop of small cottages built years ago beside the Lake. The facing shore seems thoroughly verdant, although the firs and maples shade a number of homes.

It has been a dozen years since residents formed the Cusheon Lake Stewardship Committee to express their concern and caring, and only a few years less since a subgroup formed, the Cusheon Watershed Management Steering Committee, to take action.

Blessed with leaders of bulldog perseverance and unwavering hope, and with several equally dedicated scientist-residents expert in the chemistry and hidden life of lakes, the Steering Committee has pulled off a minor miracle. As you read this, they have offered to the community a thorough-going report and call to action. The report documents that Cusheon Lake is becoming eutrophic – newly loaded with enough nutrients, mainly phosphorus, that algae blooms become more common and begin to dominate the life of the Lake. The phosphorus comes from soil particles washed overland and via streams from surface disturbances in the whole watershed (52%), and from faulty septic systems and soil disturbances at shoreline homes(23%). The call to action asks watershed residents and contractors to take more care in land clearing, driveway and home construction, and farm operations to keep soil particles out of waterways. It asks cottagers to repair or replace faulty septic systems.

It isn’t that simple, of course. Whether enough residents and contractors voluntarily will change their behaviour is a risk, head-butting against the deeply ingrained belief that owners can do what they want with their land. Regulatory incentives and penalties probably are needed. Over a half-dozen local and provincial agencies are involved in various regulatory arenas, and most of them need to make changes, too.

You can read the report and go to public meetings to

Good Stewardship at Cusheon Lake

Inside SSIC

learn more. Right now I invite you to share my admiration for what the Cusheon Lake residents have done. Remember the 4H guide to living: Head, Heart, Hands, and Health? Or neighbours have carried them all into the breach – the breach of our covenant with nature. Their work extends far beyond the facts uncovered and remedies offered. Possessing the land, they have been possessed by it. That kind of mutual possession isn’t a matter of ideals, platitudes or statistics. It involves a real moment, real people, real action, a specific place. It is local.

I admire the familiar admonition to Think Globally, Act Locally. Yet, the slogan hides dangers. One is that the temptation, having thought globally, is to act globally. To do this is to give your power away to the big structures, governmental and corporate, that delight in acting globally. The other risk is to forget that acting locally requires thinking locally. The only suitable bases for action are those grounded in specific experience in specific landscapes, carried out by people whose hearts are in thrall.– Bob Weeden

Anchorage Cove B&BBaker Beach CottagesBalmoral By The Sea B&BBarb’s Bakery & BistroBarnyard GrafixBeddis House B&BBlue Horse Folk ArtBold Bluff RetreatBootacomputerCreekhouse Realty Ltd.Don Jenkins ExcavatingDuck Creek FarmElsea PlumbingFlat Earth PhotographyGreen Acres ResortIsland EscapadesIsland Star VideoKaren Dakin, AccountantMouat’s Trading Co.Morningside Organic

Bakery & CafeMurakami Auto Body &

Repairs

Thank you to our business members:Neil Morie, ArchitectPharmasavePretzel MotorsRaven Isle GraphicsRock Salt CafeSandra Smith, Royal LePage

Salt Spring RealtySalt Spring BooksSalt Spring Centre of YogaSalt Spring Centre SchoolSalt Spring CinemaSalt Spring Coffee Co.Salt Spring Island Chamber

of CommerceSalt Spring KayakingSalt Spring SeedsSaltspring SoapworksSpindrift at Welbury PointSprague AssociatesStowell Lake FarmTerra Firma BuildersWindsor Plywood

Entering Long Harbour photo by Brian Smallshaw

�Spring 2007

Dorothy Cutting, grandmother and activist, first came to Salt Spring over 14 years ago. Fueled in part by disgust at the first Gulf War and in part by a passion for kayaking, she decided to sell her Seattle houseboat and come north. By some bizarre stroke of fortune, her home was located on the same dock where they filmed “Sleepless in Seattle,” and she was able to demand enough cash to buy a waterfront home here.

A supporter of the SSI Conservancy since its inception, Dorothy more than qualifies as a Good Steward. This is a woman who doesn’t just fret about the state of the world; she takes action. Whether by keeping her cat Luke Skywalker harnessed when outside to protect local bird populations, or by researching and delivering information on climate change to friends and politicians alike, Dorothy is active in her stewardship at all times.

Some of you are perhaps aware of Dorothy’s cross-Canada adventure of a few years back. In an effort to bring awareness to issues of climate change, she drove her hybrid car to Ottawa to personally deliver a copy of Robert Hunter’s book 2030 to every member of Parliament. “I came back from that trip full of hope,” said Dorothy. “We’d just signed the

Good Stewards: Dorothy Cutting

Inside SSIC

Kyoto Accord, and here on Salt Spring people like Elizabeth White, Marion Pape and Bob Weeden were working on an energy strategy.”

Things changed, however, when Dorothy loss a very dear friend to lung cancer. Falling into a depression, for the first time she didn’t kayak at all that summer. To make matters worse, she then loss the dog who was her companion on her big road trip, and her favorite cat. It’s no wonder that she “lost focus on what was going on.”

Dorothy says she was “blindsided by the Iraq War,” adding, “It’s a nightmare what George Bush has done just by fighting that so-called war – invasion! He’s done more to hurt the planet in a short time than is imaginable. And the billions spent that could have been directed at climate change …”

In the meantime, Dorothy continued to receive emails about the issues of the day, including reviews of James Lovelock’s controversial book, Gaia’s Revenge. She was “shook up” by Lovelock’s claim that the dangers of a nuclear power disaster were minimal in comparison to where global warming was heading. Another influence was James Hansen, a NASA scientist who courageously spoke out against Bush’s claims despite the president’s efforts to silence him. Hansen says we have less than a decade to turn things around before the tipping point of dangerous, runaway climate change occurs.

A photo revealing the shrinking polar ice cap further spurred on Dorothy, who wrote an angry article for the Sierra Club that blasted everyone from industry to environmental groups for their failure to act and withholding the truth. To her surprise, the Sierra Club actually published it. Then she decided to get more active again, and do what she knew best – getting in her hybrid car and driving. This time, she decided to head to the Arctic to really investigate and draw attention to what was happening there.

Dorothy left for that trip just last year, in the summer of 2006. The attention on the 75-year woman traveling on her own to change the world was excellent, with the Sierra Club alerting the media at her every stop. To her lasting disappointment, however, she only got as far as Whitehorse, as she contracted a mysterious, life-threatening virus en route. Subsequently she’s been left with a mountain of research she’s not sure what to do with, although she vows to continue “doing everything legally and morally possible to change things.”

“This is how I got into this mess of too much reading, too many emails, all dealing with important things that have to be dealt with,” Dorothy explained. “The problem is humans have made this mess, and now humans, with all their flaws, will have to solve it.”

For now, Dorothy is still very active in finding and

Continued on page 14

10 The Acorn - Newsletter of the Salt Spring Island Conservancy

Island Landowners Save Property Taxes

Ilse Leader photo by Briony Penn

January came as a shock to many Gulf Islands landowners as BC Assessment notices arrived with another increase in property values. Property assessments in the Southern Gulf Islands went up an average of 15.5 percent this year according to BC Assessment’s Brian Hawkins, Capital Area Assessor. The largest increases were seen on the outer Gulf Islands (Galiano, Mayne, the Penders and Saturna), but Salt Spring still has the highest property values in the islands. The average 2 acre, non-waterfront, single family dwelling on Salt Spring goes for $415,500, while waterfront properties average $846,300.

Recognizing that landowners, faced with high property taxes, are more likely to develop or log their properties to pay their bills, the Islands Trust developed the Natural Area Protection Tax Exemption Program (NAPTEP). Launched in 2005, NAPTEP rewards landowners who place a conservation covenant over part of their land with a 65% property tax exemption on the protected portion of their land.“NAPTEP provides a unique opportunity to eligible Gulf Island landowners,” says Islands Trust Chair Kim Benson. “By volunteering to protect ecological features on their property they can leave a legacy for future generations while also saving money on their property taxes.”

“NAPTEP provided the incentive I needed to protect my land,” says Salt Spring Island property owner, Ilse Leader. “I recouped the costs of entering the program in the first year.” Mrs. Leader said that she would recommend the program to other land owners adding that “land owners entering the program should be aware that the primary intention of NAPTEP is to protect land with high ecological values.” NAPTEP participants report that they are saving between $1,300 and $3,700 annually on their property taxes because of these new covenants while protecting areas ranging in size from 1.8 hectares (4.4 acres) to 23.7 hectares (58.5 acres).

The Islands Trust Fund is now accepting NAPTEP applications from landowners wishing to start reducing their taxes in 2008. To be eligible for the program, properties must be in the Southern Gulf Islands or Gambier Island Local Trust Area and must have high ecological value. The 2007 deadline for application to the Natural Area Protection Tax Exemption Program is April 1st.

More information is available by visiting the Islands Trust website at www.islandstrust.bc.ca or by phoning the Islands Trust Fund at (250) 405-5186 (toll free via Enquiry BC at 1-800-663-7867) or come to the NAPTEP talk on March 9th 2-4pm at the Lion’s Hall. – Kate Emmings, on behalf of the Islands Trust Fund

Stewardship

11Spring 2007

Today a snowstorm envelops our village and farm. It is mild by standards of our latitude but notable in this soft corner of Canada. The snow chased me indoors yesterday; I imagine its pleasure at finding a place it almost intimidates.

The opaque snow has shrink-wrapped my little kingdom to a chair, a desk, and bookshelves. I thumb a well-sifted pile of verbal kindling, starters for a piece of writing still undefined. There are words I wandered with a few weeks or years ago, going nowhere. “Island” floats into view, accidentally, perhaps, but it feels akin to my storm-borne sense of isolation. I let my mind follow the word.

All things are islands, I reason. To exist as something describable is to be surrounded - - defined, really – by something else.

Consider this: There is an islet, very small, in Siskiwit Lake on Isle Royale, Michigan. The Isle’s hem is fretted by constant waves of Lake Superior, whose bulk is dwarfed by the surrounding continent. North America has been an island since 1914 when water flowed through the Panama Canal. Continent and ocean together are enveloped by the planetary atmosphere, making Earth an island within a galaxy that is itself an island in our universe. Is that universe, once thought unique and not needing a name, an island within others?

There are other sorts of islands all around us. A prairie may be an island in a sea of trees; a wood may be an island in a sea of grass. Love is an island in a sea of indifference, which in turn is surrounded by our inescapable sociability.

“No Man is an island,” John Donne wrote, “entire of it self.” His thought pulled us all, including those who come kicking and screaming, into the human family. We are not entire of our selves. With equal truth he could have asserted that no island is an island. Every island, whether geographical or metaphorical, must have a threshold where it ends and something else begins, but no island is ever impenetrable.

My musings move from the general to the personal. This Island is not any island, but the one that is home. This storm is not any storm, but mine, different from the smothering turbulence engulfing the mainland.

I’ll throw down the gauntlet: What, if anything, does our Island edge keep in or out? It bars neither death nor taxes, not sun or air or far-travelling seeds or birds. It does not stop our soil from sliding and washing slowly into the sea, nor bar the evaporated and wind-blown ocean water from falling as rain on our hills. The shoreline keeps out nothing humanity says; I wish fervently that it could block the telemarketer’s call at supper hour. People come and go, impeded only by will and circumstance. No wall diminishes the traffic of economic goods and bads or shelters us from war, terror, discovery or creativity.

The only thing common to all boundaries is that they have holes.

Features

Islands, Harbours and Other Comforts My skin keeps me in, mostly, And you out, mostly, Confining entry to a few hiati And hidden rules of engagement.

If there is an aspect of islandness that endures such argument it is in the realm of human perceptions and the actions that follow from them. My Island, Chu’an or Salt Spring Island, is of a size that any person can encompass in repeated personal experience. It can be known, intimately known, as it is at any moment and as it changes through our lifetime. Vancouver Island, next door, is too big to be known in that way. Our deep and mutual personal experiences lead to shared responsibility. Here the sea is the edge of local planning, fire, police, emergency, education and health services. Businesses, non-profit groups, churches and our weekly paper centre on the Island. The water around us concentrates our caring. Without seriously barring our travels or confining our interests, it defines and embraces community.

Three of the “hiati” that breach the boundary of our Island are our main harbours. An image of one shines now in my mind. I see the sparse winter flock of boats at marinas, ducking under the north breeze. Snow thickens on their decks but melts back from the water heat at their gunnels. Lights are on in the village. Reflections bob and slant in the restless water. Our village creek exhausts itself in the tide. Beyond it, lights thin out, increase a bit at the sailing club docks, grow sparse and finally disappear in the park that once was a seaside farm.

Harbours are a joy. They are more than inlet, cove, or bay, the cool, neutral terms of the geographer. They are not ports, where commerce tramples nature. Harbours are defined by balance, by warmly human sheltering and secure residence in some right and pleasing proportion with interwoven and nearby nature. People live, worship, work and do business there. Yet amid that activity brooks freely reflect the stars as they meet the tides. Children slip and slop in search of sea-treasure at the ebb. Unseen, ocean life moves from shallows to deeps and back as ancient rules demand.

In less than 200 years human numbers have gone from 1 billion to 6.4 billion today. Thousands of harbours have become ports. In each instance village became town and town became city. Fill made estuary into land, dredges reshaped depths, docks blurred shorelines. Streams dove into culverts far from the sea, emerging like pariahs in the perpetual shadow of cement, steel or timbered pilings. Big boats shoulder aside small ones, commerce outbids

Continued on page 14

1� The Acorn - Newsletter of the Salt Spring Island Conservancy

New Nominating CommitteeWe have a new process for finding nominees for directorships, one of the most important tasks the Conservancy undertakes each year. The work is now in the hands of a Nominating Committee drawn from the general membership; until now we have left it to the Board’s Executive Committee. The benefit, we believe, will be a slate of candidates with a good balance of fresh faces and experienced leaders.

The 2007 Nominating Committee consists of Larry Appleby, David Denning, Donna De Haan, and Bob Weeden. Just appointed, this committee will find candidates for six vacancies on the Board; they have been asked to find seven or more people for the slate, ensuring that members have a meaningful choice. (Don’t forget that any member at the AGM can nominate a candidate from the floor, too, as long as the nominee is a member of SSIC and agrees to run!)

If the new committee asks you to stand in nomination, please give it serious thought. Nothing is more important to our long-term health than a capable, hands-on Board.

The slate will be sent to members in April, along with notices of resolutions to be offered at the May 11, 2007 AGM.

Inside SSIC

Land Trust and Stewardship Seminar Series 2007

10th Anniversary Celebration of the Conservation of BC's Special Places

March 16-18th, 2006, Cowichan Lake Outdoor Education and Conference Centre* 3 full day workshops to choose from March 16th (including site visits)

* 15 Seminars on Conservation and Stewardship – led by BC's leaders in the field * Guest Speakers: internationally renowned scientists and nature writersRobert Michael Pyle and Bill Merilees (includes new book sales and signing)

The Land Trust Alliance of BC 204-338 Lower Ganges RoadSalt Spring Island, BC V8K 2V3 250-538-0112

Further Details and registration atwww.landtrustalliance.bc.ca

Phantom Orchid photo by Robin Annschild

Looking south-east from Mount Tuam photo by Brian Smallshaw

1�Spring 2007

Continued on page 14

• February 15, Elisa Campbell will be speaking on Sustainable Development in an Island Context. She will describe community planning projects she has helped to facilitate in other BC communities.

• March 15, Deborah Curran will speak on Protecting Our Green Infrastructure. Curran is Founder of Smart Growth BC. Her law firm is dedicated to developing legal strategies for sustainable growth by assisting clients to implement innovative approaches to resource management and development.

Both talks will be held at the Community Gospel Chapel at 7:30 – 9:30 pm (doors will open at 7:00) and are FREE to the public. There will be time for discussion at the end of each talk. It is a poignant paradox of the modern era that at a time when decisions by leaders and citizens are having increasingly long-term impacts, time frames for decision-makers appear to be shrinking. Can we double our population and be sustainable in the next 25 years? Will the buildings and infrastructure that we are now planning be appropriate for a world exposed to rapid changes in technology and climate? How can we design for the future? Come hear, think, discuss and Imagine Salt Spring.

Contact: Maxine Leichter 537-1577, or Margery Moore 537-4400 if you have any questions.

Inside SSIC

New Nominating CommitteePlanning for the FutureA Speaker Series Contributing to the OCP

Part of the allure of Salt Spring Island is being isolated, away from populated centres. But to plan for the future, we need to consider the influences of cities around us, make use of experiences of similar communities from BC and around the world and increasingly important, consider future uncertainties.

The Island has just begun an overdue and important Official Community Plan (OCP) review. A limited number of community members are actually involved in the focus groups but the planning for the future of Salt Spring is of interest to all islanders. To assist OCP focus groups and all other interested residents think and plan for our islands future, the Institute for Sustainability, Education and Action (I-SEA) is sponsoring a series of talks called, Imagine Salt Spring: Planning for the Future. I-SEA hopes this series will expose the community to new ideas about planning and inspire us to think and plan thoughtfully and sustainably for our islands future. There are two talks left in this Speakers Series that started in January with Sebastian Moffatt, an international researcher and consultant on energy efficiency and ecologically based community planning.

Imagine Salt Spring

loves to hike, cycle, cook, garden, do yoga and volunteer. She has been very involved with Fulford School’s Nature Club and has been volunteering for the Stewards in Training school program since its conception.

Cate moved to Salt Spring Island from the Yukon over 10 years ago with her partner Gavin Johnston and two children, Liam and Seanna. She holds a B.Sc. (Ecology) from Guelph and a M.A. (Environment and Management) from Royal Roads University. Cate melds her experiences in field biology, interpretation and education to work with learners in ecological education. Like many members of the Conservancy, her personal interests and professional pursuits in natural history merge as one passion – an ongoing awareness and wonder about the natural world. She works this into the fabric of her teaching. Cate has trained teachers and worked in classrooms through the GLOBE Program, an international environmental education program based in experiential field science. She is especially keen about bringing ecological understanding into the context of the evolution of the universe, the tremendous time frame this places us within and the interconnection of all life. She is co-founder of the Fulford School’s Nature Club and has been an active volunteer with the Stewards in Training School Program.

See what I mean! We are very fortunate having these two

Continued from page 1as our new School Program Coordinators and are looking forward to April when the program will begin. The program already includes grades 4 – 7 and this year, we hope to add a new program for grade 2/3 and 8. The Conservancy hopes in the very near future to have an experiential field trip program for grades 2 – 8, so every year students will be exposed to the different ecosystems in their own back yard and understand the true meaning of being a good steward of the land. Sarah says she is really looking forward to expanding the program so that more children on Salt Spring can experience increased curiosity and connection to this beautiful island.

That is what this program is about... connecting with nature in a way that makes students know they must and want to care for it. It will be Sarah’s and Cate’s job to come up with this year’s new curriculum and organize the program which will include finding and training volunteers. This program cannot exist without its volunteers. Volunteers in the past have raved about this program: “I wouldn’t have missed the experience for anything; thanks to your superb creativity and organizational skills it was great for both volunteers and kids.” “The day was wonderful. A highlight was seeing mosquitoes emerge from their aquatic pupae into flying adults…You have organized a great program.” And “I learned so much and I am so glad I was a part of this

1� The Acorn - Newsletter of the Salt Spring Island Conservancy

to smother good land with sterile roadways, with parking lots, service stations, carports, manufacturing plants and strip mines. We would surely perpetuate suburban sprawl, maybe increase it. Millions of animals would continue to be flattened – some of them named Homo sapiens by hopeful early-day taxonomists – on highways every day. Moreover, every new fuel proposed to replace petroleum has more than one set of bones we can hear rattling in the closet. Where, for example, will the water come to grow 50 million acres of corn to replace US gasoline demand with ethanol?

What should we do about global warming? Follow the pepper flakes. Global warming could be our last best chance to re-think the whole human project. However, that isn’t nearly enough by half. Global warming isn’t humanity’s problem, it is life’s problem. And it isn’t a problem concerning some species and some habitats, it is a Gaia problem. It is, as James Lovelock said not long ago, our most serious affront to a planetary system that is entirely interdependent, possessed of both self-healing and self-destructing processes, and hence fatally vulnerable to small but widespread changes, of which atmospheric carbon level is one.

A strong wind blows. In this ultimate and only house that we call earth, we and our companions in life feel the shudder of the tempest. Let’s keep safe our house and the dwellings of the community of all living beings.– Bob Weeden

Continued from page �

waterside residence, and no child dares play. The shore is not for living.

This hasn’t happened to our Island and I don’t think it will. Not wanting it, our community will make a different dream real.

Falling now among our fruit trees, the snow rounds the garden’s outline and whitens our roof. It muffles the cries of the larger world. I turn off the desk light and climb the stairs. I am soon in bed. In that delicious confusion just before sleep I pull the Island and its harbours like double comforters to my shoulders, light as snow.– Bob Weeden

Continued from page 11

distributing information that will help. She is known for buying tens of copies of books such as George Monbiot’s Heat and lending or giving them to anyone who will read them. In the week I spoke with her, she was also hosting national Green Party leader Elizabeth May and going to a Vancouver dinner to meet Stéphane Dion, in between attending two different evening talks on sustainability here on Salt Spring.

Indeed, in spite of her claim that she is forcing herself to slow down because her “personal life is shot,” she has far more on the go in both arenas than I ever do. And despite some occasional lapses into pessimism, generally she remains hopeful if realistic about our capacity to change in time. One event that Dorothy is currently excited about is The 2010 Imperative: Global Emergency Teach-in featuring Dr. James Hansen, among other experts. The teach-in will be web-casted live from the New York Academy of Sciences on February 20, and available to Salt Springers at I-SEA’s Ganges headquarters.

Another exciting event is a day of action planned for April 14, where groups across the United States and the world will participate in extreme physical demonstrations to enforce legislation to address climate change. Dorothy encourages everyone to visit the Step It Up web site, http://www.stepitup2007.org for more information.

The good news, Dorothy says, is that when you have a strong passion you can always find other people who share it, and Salt Spring is a hub of activity in that regard.– Elizabeth Nolan

Continued from page �

Yellow Montaine Violet

program.” You too could be a volunteer... please. If you would like to volunteer to help in anyway with the school program, please contact Sarah or Cate at the Conservancy Office at 538-0318. Kudos go to Kate Leslie and Deborah Miller (our past coordinators) for setting a high standard. Thank you again for the hard work, creativity and enthusiasm they put into this program. All money received from being a part of the Thrifty Food’s Smile Card Program will go towards the School Program. Pick up a card at the Conservancy Office Tues., Wed., or Thurs. 10:00 am to 3:00 pm or at Thrifty’s courtesy desk.– Jean Gelwicks

Continued from page 13

Just Pull It!Any time is a good time to pull or cut invasives like broom and gorse, but the wet months are especially good for pulling. Call the Conservancy office (538-0318) or Brian Smallshaw (653-4774) to borrow a broom puller.

1�Spring 2007

Editor: Elizabeth NolanLayout: Brian Smallshaw

Board of Directors: Samantha Beare (Treasurer)Maureen BendickNigel DenyerCharles DorworthJean Gelwicks (Secretary)Ashley Hilliard (Vice-president)Maxine LeichterSteve LeichterDeborah MillerLinda QuiringBrian SmallshawRuth TarasoffBob Weeden (President)Doug Wilkins

The Salt Spring Island Conservancy#201 Upper Ganges Centre, 338 Lower Ganges Rd.Mail: PO Box 722,Salt Spring Island BC V8K 2W3Office hours : Tues/Wed/Thurs10 am - 3 pmPhone: (250) 538-0318Fax: (250) 538-0319Email:ssiconservancy@saltspring.comWeb site:www.saltspringconservancy.ca

The Acorn is the newsletter of the Salt Spring Island Conservancy, a local non-profit society supporting and enabling voluntary preservation and restoration of the natural environment of Salt Spring Island and surrounding waters. We welcome your feedback and contributions, by email to ssiconservancy@saltspring.com or by regular mail. Opinions expressed here are the authors’, not subject to Conservancy approval.

Membership ApplicationYouth (Under 16) 1 yr @ $15 _ Senior or Low-Income: 1 yr @ $20 _ 3 yr @ $60 _Regular Single 1 yr @ $25 _ 3 yr @ $75 _Regular Family 1 yr @ $35 _ 3 yr @ $105 _Group/School 1 yr @ $35 _ 3 yr @ $105 _Business 1 yr @ $55 _ 3 yr @ $165 _

Name: ______________________________________Address: ____________________________________ ____________________________________________Postal Code: _________________________________Phone: ______________________________________Email: _______________________________________

r Please send me the Acorn via e-mail. (We NEVER give out member’s email addresses to anyone!)

r This is a renewal for an existing membership

Donations In addition to my membership fee above, I have enclosed my donation in the amount of: $50 _ $100 _ $250 _ $500 _ $1000_ $2500 _ $5000 _ Other ___________ Tax receipts will be provided for donations of $20 or more.

Volunteer OpportunitiesWe have a Volunteer Application Form that best describes areas you wish to help in. For now, which areas interest you? Please check off:r Office Workr Landowner Contactr Information Table at eventsr Education Eventsr Eco-Home Tourr Information Table at SSI Fall Fair/

Craft Fairsr Joining a SSIC Committee (Land

Restoration & Management, Fundraising, Covenants, Acquisitions, Education, Stewardship, or Environmental Governance)

r Other: _______________________

Printed on 18% recycled paper

Essential details

Help Wanted:• Do you like talking to landowners?• Are you interested in endangered species?• Do you have 4-8 hours a month that you could

volunteer to the Conservancy?

We need YOU to volunteer for our Stewardship Project!Please call Karen 538-0318 for more information.

Items Wanted:Donations of any of the following gratefully received.

Office Items Other Items Air Miles Saws, clippersSpeaker phone Canadian Tire $Field guides Hand secateurs

We would also appreciate donations of gifts, such as new books or items related to nature or conservation, to give to our educational speakers, who volunteer their time.

Office UpdateGarry Oak SeedlingsThanks to a very generous donation by Paul Linton, the Conservancy now has about 600 Garry oaks, gathered as nuts in 04, planted, and now potted in 8” pots in good dirt. We are selling them as a fundraiser for $10 each, or 3 for $25. We encourage Salt Spring landowners that live in current or former Garry oak ecosystems to plant oaks, and we can provide information on the best way to do so. Please call 538-0318 to arrange purchase of oaks, or for more information about endangered Garry oak ecosystems on Salt Spring. Small Things Help!

Please remember to put your shopping receipt in the green Conservancy receipt box at GVM and you can get a Thrifty Foods SMILE card at the Conservancy office and 5% of your purchase will go to our School Program.. You can also credit the Conservancy when you take back your bottles to the Salt Spring Refund Centre (Bottle Depot at GVM). Every little bit helps!

Ganges PO Box 722Salt Spring Island BC

V8K 2W3

40026325Ganges PO Box 722Salt Spring Island BC

V8K 2W3