AcorntheThe Newsletter of the Salt Spring Island Conservancy Number 33, Autumn 2006

http://saltspring.gulfislands.com/conservancy

Inside:President’s Page .............. 2Director’s Desk ............... 3New Planner .................. 3Features Salt Spring Coffee Co. . 7Natural History Bent Twigs .................. 4Events Calendar ...................... 6 Event Notes ................. 6Inside SSIC Green Pilgrims Guide ... 8 Hilary Brown ............... 8 Deborah Miller............. 9 Ashley Hilliard ............. 9 Ten-year Members ..... 11 Garden Benches ......... 13 Staff Biologist ............. 14Stewardship Snake Sites ................. 10 Essential Details ........... 15

They Need More of This!“They need MORE of this!” said one elementary teacher, referring to the Stewards in Training School Programs that took all grade 4/ 5 students on all day field trips to Ford Lake and Burgoyne Bay beach. Grade 6/7 students went to a Garry oak meadow at the Andreas Vogt Nature Reserve.

A volunteer in the program was just as excited when she stated, “I wouldn’t have missed this experience for anything! Thanks to the superb creativity and organizational skills it was great for both volunteers and kids.”

”A grade 5 student exclaimed, “I have learned so much. Thank you for arranging these field trips.” As one particular enthusiastic grade 7 student put it, “I love Garry oaks. I never heard about them before but now I love Garry oaks”.

“I love Garry oaks” That is it in a nutshell. Falling in

love with the land. If we can get students to understand how ecosystems work and how everything is connected to the health of everything else, they can’t help being awed with the wonder of it all. Our hope is by that understanding and love they will become better stewards of the land than our generation has been because they will “get it”, in a way that we didn’t. Without a healthy environment we have nothing. Everything starts with and depends on a planet whose ecosystems are intact and healthy.

This is a long introduction to let you know that the Conservancy is proud to announce that we have received funding to continue with our Stewardship in Training Program this year thanks to the Gaming Commission and to

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� The Acorn - Newsletter of the Salt Spring Island Conservancy

I usually catch things on the third bounce, so “authenticity” probably had joined the Top 100 Buzzwords by the time I heard a business leader use it this spring while chatting about the place of tourism in our community.

“The best thing we can do to attract the visitors we want,” he said, “is to be an authentic community. Just be ourselves.”

Then I remembered seeing the term in our 1998 Official Community Plan. One of the Plan’s goals is “To ensure that our community continues to function as an authentic, resident-centred community in the face of internal and external pressures to change and grow…”

“Authentic.” It has the truth of the oboe’s “A” that brings other players to pitch. I like it.

I was still mulling it over two months later when the host of a CBC talk show remarked that people who are creative with computers can live where they want to, and that they are shopping around for authentic communities. I was glad enough to hear my positive reaction seconded; if a phrase is on talk radio it’s mainstream. I took a bit of issue with the way the whole conversation developed, however. These folks, lucky enough to be creative with the medium of the millennium, seemed to be shopping for authenticity as they did manicured lawns, brew pubs, views of mountains and colourful autumn foliage. Something to buy into. My ruminations had taken a different direction: some old-fashioned notion like “if it is worthwhile you probably have to earn it.”

Still feeling picky, I thought that to be authentic a thing only has to be true to its character; genuine but not necessarily admirable. A town could be authentically bigoted or violent. It could even pretend to be genuine and still be authentic, if it had the character of a con artist.

“Quirky,” I thought,” but I’d better pick up a cooler kartoffel.”

It takes time for a community to achieve authenticity. New places rarely possess it. Remember the New Towns that were the concrete expressions of Utopia after WW II? Planned by visionaries and hired consultants, they had every feature avant-garde engineers, architects, landscapers, sociologists, educators and designers of infrastructure could want. But they didn’t have authenticity, and most didn’t last long enough to get it. And think of the thousands of new bedroom towns fringing every older city in North America. Most are less than half a century old. Some are forming right now, tight-packed groups of obscenely huge homes and condos springing out of yesterday’s dairy farm, leaving just enough space for the formulaic mini-mall and short-grass dog latrine. The computer gurus aren’t looking for authenticity there.

Time and joy-packed, failure-ridden living are essential

ingredients for the authentic community. Necessary, but not sufficient. At least two more are required.

Any settlement can have authentic individuals in it, and still miss the mark at the level of community. The move from person to community is more than a matter of arithmetic. It involves a shift from I to We, from the self-achieving, idiosyncratic self to the organic community that surrounds us, that embraces or rejects us, that makes us more or less than we can be alone, that pre-dates and outlives us, that shapes and is shaped by our wholehearted residence. Community authenticity is harmonious with the character of current members, but out of its longer history and comprehensive memory it emerges into something more.

The other element essential for the authentic community is rich relationship to landscape. In part this is the trial – and – error work of adjusting community form to local nature. Common sense eventually shapes a community to fit safely, conveniently and efficiently within the floodplains, bluffs, swamps and shorelines of its surroundings. Beyond that is the never-finished work of adapting communal to natural function. The authentic community lives with its landscape, not on it. The land provides, the community cares. The community asks, the land replies. The community’s boundaries are not the obvious limits of dense habitation or the political territories of governance but the entire area of continually adjusting, mutually dependent human and non-human societies.

I do think the term “authentic community” is full of meaning and instruction. Yet, I’m afraid for its future. I’ve seen new and hopeful phrases rise and fall before. “Sustainable development,” for example, was offered in 1970 by an ecologist who hoped it would do more than smooth off the rough edges of human expansion – that it would express limits to growth, turn us from “more” to “better.” It spread, became a cliché, cheapened, and finally became interchangeable with “sustainable growth,” a simple-minded bovine for sure. Today the revolutionary intent of the term has vanished, drowned in misuse and perverted into a marketing gimmick for yet another gated housing project.

We greenies haven’t been very careful with our own language. My eyebrows arch every time I hear the term “sensitive ecosystem,” for instance. I just don’t know what it accomplishes. Every ecosystem (another fuzzy word when it leaves the ivy tower and reaches Earth) is sensitive to something. The biota of the remotest arctic ice pack is being clobbered by a one or two degree rise in mean annual temperature. Tundra plants are damaged easily by the

Authenticity: The Rise and Fall of Meaning

President’s Page

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�Autumn 2006

2nd Eco-Home Tour a Huge SuccessOn August 6th, the Salt Spring Island Conservancy and Salt Spring Island Earth Festival Society showed close to 600 residents and visitors ten eco-homes and home renovations by Conservancy members on the second annual Salt Spring Eco-Home Tour. Sustainable home technologies on the tour included: windmill power, rammed earth, hemp straw bale, cob, water-catchment, masonry heating, solar, and grey water systems. With support from the Conservancy, the Earth Festival Society organized a Sustainable Building Forum on the eve of the tour.

To kick off the weekend’s events, architect and keynote speaker Helen Goodland, Executive Director of BC’s Sustainable Building Centre in Vancouver, spoke to a crowd of more than 200 at Meaden Hall. Goodland listed cost and a lack of time and knowledge as common myths of integrating sustainable practices into home construction or renovation. She said events such as the Eco-Home Tour prove Salt Spring Island is at the cutting edge of sustainability and do a significant part to debunk the myths. By telling others about their successes and failures, homeowners taking part in the tour are the role models of a movement that is still relatively new in other parts of the country.

The next day, the homeowners, who in most cases built their own homes, spent the day explaining the features incorporated into their home designs on continuous guided tours. On this year’s tour, the homes included an organic farm with solar hot water heating, a masonry heater with built-in bake oven and plumbing for hot water, I-WOOD construction that uses 30% less lumber and less waste, the island’s first legally permitted cob dwelling which has walls made from sand, clay and straw, and insulation made from recycled blue jeans; and a hemp straw bale home. Straw bale walls are highly insulative (up to R40) and sound proof. Other technologies on the tour include an energy retrofit of a 1950’s cottage with a solar hot water system, and several water catchment systems. The homes were packed with ideas to reduce energy and water usage, and associated

operating costs. Hearing these dedicated homeowners speak so passionately about their creative and sustainable building practices was definitely a highlight of touring the unique homes and beautiful gardens.

The Eco-Home Tour and Sustainable Home Building Forum was only possible with the overwhelming support of the following homeowners, volunteers, businesses and organizations:

Earth Festival Society, Adina Hildebrandt & Andrew Haigh, Paul Burke & Anna Gustafson, Denis Hoddinott, Elizabeth White, Rita & Denny Thomas, Becky & Paul Niedziela, Axel Dollheiser & Juliet Smith, Marcus Gasper & Eva Kuhn, Sandra Harrison, Marion Pape, Pat Parkes, Ann Stewart, Mark Broderick, Ellen Taylor, Meror & Mike Krayenhoff, Maxine & Steve Leichter, Chris & Carole Scott, Manfred Pape, Helen Goodland, Peter Ronald, Katherine Atkins, Eila & Holly Allgood, Zillah Parker, Nora Layard, Daniel Logan, Charlotte Argue, Maria Dammel, Elizabeth Buchanan & Larry Woods, Nancy Braithwaite, George & Nancy Slain, Lois Sprague, Katherine Atkins, Roger Middleton & Sylvia, Leslie Wallace, James Falcon, Ruth Tarasoff, David Borrowman, Linda Horsfall, Dick Willmott, Chris Drake, Ruth Tarasoff, Elehna De Sousa, Thrifty’s, Island Star Video, The Royal Canadian Legion, Alan Goldin & Manon Levesque @ Morningside Organic Bakery & Cafe, Adina, Andrew, Gretta & Carrie @ Salt Spring Books, The Driftwood, EcoNews, Ian Garthshore, Nicolette Brinkhoff,

GISS, Natureworks, Bob Weeden, Bill Goddu, Samantha Beare, Pam Barry, Mark Starik, Margery Moore, ISEA, Ometepe, Chamber of Commerce, Jean Gelwicks, Mark Haughey, Lisa Lloyd, Environment Canada, CRD, Peter Lamb, Islands Trust, Energy Savings Plan, and all of the folks who carpooled and helped in any way to make an extremely successful Eco-Home Tour.– Karen Hudson

Director’s Desk

� The Acorn - Newsletter of the Salt Spring Island Conservancy

Bent TwigsThe Open WindowSummer days were often hot. The family worked through them, each day much like the last in its hopeful start and listless finish, but changing as time strode between first seed and final harvest. The young girl laboured steadily, filling the spaces between her own chores with hours on call at garden, kitchen, poultry run, hay wagon and milking barn. Sometimes the quest for a straying heifer took her out among the daisied distant fields. Mostly she worked immersed in the smells of chaff and dust and diesel, the sounds of harness and horse and tractor, the sights of buildings and machinery.

At night, in her room, she would open her window wide. It seemed to her that news of a different world came to her on the night breeze. In the barn the cows were quiet, in the darkened farmyard the outbuildings and machines were shadows sought by silent, wide-eyed cats. Something wild crept across the sill, something in the space between firefly and star, something not of the workaday world. She never could paint that feeling in words, but its nightly presence brought peace and yearning.

The schoolgirl liked biology. The endless variety in the forms of life, in their ways of living and in their combination of self-reliance and depthless dependence amazed her. High school opened into college, college to graduate school. There she first ventured into the wild country to the north - “This must be where the night wind is born,” she thought - studying birds in Algonquin Park. The short years brought long steps west and north, marriage, a move to Alaska, children. Always the air from far fresh places, the spacious beauty of alpine heights, the discovery of new forms of wild life, filled her with joy. Garden flowers bloomed for her. The countryside’s bounty came into her house, onto her table, into the growing bodies that sat around it.

Bless this food, and all food. Bless this family, and all families. Bless this life, and all life.

PumpkinseedAll of the grown-ups the boy knew worked hard. His

father, a car mechanic for wages, maintained house and garden. His mother created and tended the home. The boy and his sisters had small chores. Rarely did the family relax together, but one summer Saturday, out of the blue, the father said to his son, “How would you like to go fishing?” The answer was an incredulous but loud “Yes!”

With a peeled sapling, 10 feet of string, a safety pin, and six earthworms dug from a shady corner of the garden, they walked to where a brook had been dammed to supply water for a cloth-dying factory. The boy knew the pond contained fish, because once in winter, after he tumbled while skating, he peered through clear ice into the depths. He could see

sluggish insects among the bottom debris, and once in a while dark fish swam by.

At pond’s edge the father showed the boy how to loop the worm onto the pin and, with a lifting pole, arc the line and worm outward into the amber trembling water. The boy waited. He was fascinated by the reflections of leaves, branches and bits of sky that painted themselves from his feet out to open water.

Then his father, watching the line, whispered, “You have a fish!” As if a trigger had tripped, the boy jerked the pole over his back, and with it, a small fish. He dropped the pole and rushed to pin the flapping fish to the forest floor. He and his father bent together to marvel at its glistening colours: greenish black on back and tail, yellow-orange on the belly, sides speckled with green, yellow and red; where the gill covers opened and closed, a single blue dot.

Six decades passed. The boy never forgot the revelation that summer day of the busy lives lived secretly around him became a never-satiated curiosity about nature. He became a research biologist, then a teacher. He committed himself to conservation. No matter what work kept his mind busy, he learned to welcome nature onto the paths of his senses and into the depths of his heart.

Spreading CornSince the 1920s these broad fields, reclaimed from

boreal forest, have grown the grass that feeds the cows that make the milk for the people of this northern town. In the farmer’s annual calendar are days marked early each April for spreading the winter’s accumulated manure. Dark on the gleaming white fields, the manure absorbs the sunlight and melts the snow earlier here than anywhere else in hundreds of wilderness miles. The early banquet of stubble and barn sweepings entices exploring geese, cranes, ducks and shorebirds. People drive or stroll from town to see them tumble out of the sky, so empty all these months, and to listen to the bird’s happy clamour.

Early one Sunday morning late in April two boys, 4 and 7, walk onto the fields with their parents. Each boy carries a pail of corn in two hands. At every tall-booted step the pail swings and meets a shin, but the excited boys carry the awkward weights far out into the snow-blotched field. The boy spread the corn, sometimes throwing it toward a skein of fence-skimming geese as though hoping the birds will catch it in mid-air. Father and mother tell the boys about the far-flung rooms in the homes of these migrants, interrupting the tale to point to a flight of pintails, a dart of golden plovers, a harrier teetering as it scans the ground for mice.

The corn is spread, the family walks to field’s edge and the birds in hundreds move in to feast.

The boys become men. One is a painter of houses and

Natural History

�Autumn 2006

canvases. From his apartment in old San Francisco he and his partner foray into the Sierras and Great Basin. They explore back roads, hike to high lakes, ostensibly to catch and release diminutive golden trout but truly to be in the peace and beauty of the mountains. He is not a joiner, but he votes as green as he can in a nation over-impressed with olive drab.

The other boy lives with his spouse and children in the log house in which he grew up. He has taught pre-school but now spends the school year parenting. In summer he gardens, organises family expeditions to blueberry patches and creekside picnics and guides busloads of tourists north to the Arctic. He writes science fiction, poetry and prickly letters to politicians who see only dollars in the northern landscape.

A Bird in the HandThis August Sunday of the Millennial Year the bird

banding station invites visitors. The woman in charge keeps the nets properly strung and tended, oversees the banding and keeps up a teacherly banter with the curious tourists and their often silly questions. Late in the day she looks up when four people approach - a family, she thinks, seeing look-alikes there. She finishes weighing and measuring a kinglet, her pliers clenching the minute band around the toothpick leg.

“Do you want to hold this bird?” she asks, quieting it expertly in her palm. She looks at the boy. “About 5,” she thinks, “and confident-looking.” He stretches out his hand, then backs away with his hands behind him, suddenly shy. The woman turns to the slim girl, less than 3, who watches intently. The girl steps close and lets the woman position her hands and fingers to receive the bird.

The girl never has held a warm live thing before. She is amazed, a little frightened. The bit of fluff hidden in her cupped hands is trembling. “It has a heart like me!” she thinks. She knows she could squeeze and hurt it, but she is awash in a tender protectiveness. Then, between her thumbs, a dark, bright eye glances up and meets her gaze. The tiny girl and tiny bird see each other, the bird’s eye hawk-wild, the girl’s nearly half-wild. She has known only the eyes of home: parents, brother, cats, dog and friends. The bird’s stare is from another world. Suddenly the trees and hills that have been the inert setting of her life - less to her than the carpets and furnishings of her house - become an enlivened, enormous mystery.

The years may bury this moment in such an overburden of other experiences and interests that it becomes a tantalising half-memory, seen only out of a corner of her mind.

Or it may be a decisive bending of the twig, dozens of later events enriching its emotion with knowledge and a

passion to act. The girl-child will become woman, citizen, leader, executive, family centre, poet - infinite possibilities for a life of value which always values other life.

These stories are as true as fond memory will allow. I am the young fisher who held the sunfish, Judy opened the window to feel the untamed summer breeze. Our sons’ small hands flung corn to the geese, and our granddaughter trembled to the heartbeat of the captured bird.

Children will learn. Of all the lessons they must absorb, love of nature is the easiest to teach, the longest to endure and the most crucial to pass on. From infancy to puberty a child’s best teachers are adult family. Parents. Grandparents. You.– Bob Weeden

OCP Review: Once a DecadeThis fall we have a special chance to review and change the Official Community Plan (OCP).Trustees have gathered ideas from the community about sections of the Plan that should be reviewed this round. They just announced the committees that will be formed to address key issues: Ganges Village and Harbour; Fulford Village; Energy; Farm Plan; Economic Sustainability, Jobs and Tourism; Environment; and Population, Housing and Settlement Patterns.

In case you’ve half forgotten, the OCP sharpens the broad language of our Islands Trust Policy document and makes it specific to our Island in terms of the goals for land use. It provides a community vision for future land use and defines the actions and policies that could achieve that vision. The OCP does not define how land can or cannot be used; that’s the job of our Land Use Bylaw.

The OCP does set out some tools for guiding land use. For example, “density transfers” can be used to move the right to build a house from an area of high ecological value to an area of more ordinary attributes. These donor and receiving areas are mapped. Developers trigger the process by asking the LTC to consider a specific density transfer request.

The OCP also contains a planning tool of high potential value for protecting nature, the Development Permit Area (DPA). These are places (mapped) where people undertaking construction of a defined type must show that their proposed activities meet certain criteria before receivingv a permit from the LTC. Current DPAs include shorelines, lakes, streams, wetlands, unstable slopes and erosion hazard areas.

Please consider volunteering for one or more of these important advisory committees. Speak your mind: you won’t be representing SSIC, just yourself, so you are free to say what you wish on any topic close to your heart.– Maxine Leichter

� The Acorn - Newsletter of the Salt Spring Island Conservancy

Event NotesConservancy Events

October 13th (Friday): Endangered Sharp-tailed Snake. Christian Engelstoft will speak at 7pm at the Lion’s Hall.

October 20th (Friday): Otter Limits: All About Otters. Joe Gaydos will talk about sea and river otters. Slide show and talk at 7pm at the Lion’s Hall.

November 3rd (Friday): Are Our Deer Dear? Slide show and talk on local black-tailed deer by biologists Christian Englestoft and Todd Golumbia (Parks Canada). 7pm at the Lion’s Hall.

January 19th (Friday): Predator Prowl: About Cougars and Bears. Slide show and talk by Bob Hansen and Danielle Thompson. 7pm at the Lions Hall.

Feb. TBA: Batty about Bats of Salt Spring Island. Slide show and talk by Dave Nagorsen.

Suggested donation: $5.00 to help cover our costs. This includes coffee/tea/cookies.

Anchorage Cove B&BBaker Beach CottagesBalmoral By The Sea B&BBarb’s BunsBeddis House B&BBold Bluff RetreatBootacomputerCreekhouse Realty Ltd.Green Acres ResortGulf Island Picture FramingIsland EscapadesIsland Star VideoNeil Morie - ArchitectMurakami Auto Body &

RepairsSalt Spring Books

Thank you to our business members:

Salt Spring Centre of YogaSalt Spring Centre SchoolSalt Spring Coffee Co.Salt Spring Home Design

CentreSalt Spring Island Chamber

of CommerceSalt Spring KayakingSalt Spring Way B&BSaltspring Linen & Dry

CleaningSaltspring SoapworksSpindrift at Welbury PointSprague Associates Ltd.Terra Firma Builders Ltd.The Wine Cellar

Upcoming Events

Mammals Rank High On Conservancy Presentation Schedule

Deer, otters, cougars, and bats! This season’s fall/winter lineup of speaker presentations from the Conservancy Education Committee has a definite furry focus.

Snakes The reign of mammals really gets kicked off in late October, but before that is a chance to slither into the mammal realm with a special presentation on an unusual reptile. On October 13, Christian Engelstoft speaks at the Lions Hall at 7:00 pm. on the endangered sharp-tailed snake. Salt Spring is a key location for the study of this elusive species

and more Islanders are needed to contribute sightings and data to the scientific work Engelstoft has been conducting on the Island. This colourful, illustrated, presentation will teach about sharp-tailed snakes and our three local species of garter snakes, all of which are highly beneficial, especially to gardeners. This presentation is part of the Conservancy’s Species at Risk Stewardship Project.

Otters River Otters and Sea Otters are the topic of the Conservancy’s presentation on October 20 at 7:00 pm at the Lions Hall. The illustrated talk is presented by wildlife veterinarian, Joe Gaydos, a resident of Orcas Island. Joe has been involved in otter studies and otter conservation efforts for the last five years. River otters are common inhabitants along Salt Spring’s shores, but their secretive habits make them animals of much mystery and intrigue. Join this event to learn all about our local river otters and about the sea otters whose populations and territories have been expanding along the West Coast.

Deer Just how dear are our deer? This question will be the focus for an illustrated presentation by Todd Golumbia, Wildlife Ecologist for the Gulf Islands National Park Reserve, and Christian Engelstoft, Wildlife Biologist with Alula Consulting. These scientists will report their findings from several years of studying deer on the Queen Charlotte Islands and in parks of the Capital Regional District. The talk will cover deer feeding and their effects on forest communities, and will include a brief look at another potentially problematic browser, the cottontail rabbit. The event will take place on November 3, at 7:00 pm at the Lions Hall. Love ’em or hate ’em – deer are here. This presentation will help you better understand our deer and their roles in the ecosystem.

Cougars and Bears Populations of wolves, cougars, and bears seem to be thriving on Vancouver Island. Amazingly over the years, a few of these large mammal predators (cougars and bears, at least) have managed to make it to Salt Spring Island. Bob Hansen and Danielle Thompson from Parks Canada will provide an illustrated look into the lives of these predators, their lifestyles, habits, and human encounters’. The main focus of the evening will be on cougars and their interactions with humans. As Parks Canada Wardens in Pacific Rim Park, Hansen and Thompson have been involved in detailed research on predator behaviours and conservation for the last few years. This talk, Predator Prowl, is scheduled for January 19 at 7:00 pm at the Lions Hall.

Bats As the winter drags into February, many Salt Springers begin to go batty, and our presentation for this month is designed to help you along in this direction – at least in a natural history sort of way. In late February (TBA),

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�Autumn 2006

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Features

Member: Salt Spring Coffee CompanyWalk into the Salt Spring Coffee Co.’s Ganges café at almost any time of day, and you’re sure to find a bustling environment. There’s often a lengthy, although fast moving, lineup at the till, and a smaller one of folks waiting for specialty drinks at the bar. The tables and comfy couch are put to good use by all sorts of customers, from families to hiking clubs to tourists.

There’s a good reason for the café’s popularity – The coffee is excellent. Most of us are also aware that Salt Spring Coffee Co.’s ethical business practices make it a great place to support. What you may not know, is that the Company is a pioneer in offering certified organic, fair trade, and shade grown coffees, and has helped open up a market for green and ethical coffee consumption in North America.

Founder and president, Mickey McLeod says, “the Salt Spring Coffee Co. grew out of a passion for a great cup of coffee.” Formerly called the SS Roasting Co. (as it is still referred to by many locals), the business idea sprung in part from the fact that McLeod and his partner, Robbyn Scott, were constantly trying to source organic coffee for themselves. They were also aware of the growing market for specialty coffees in America. Looking at the demographic of Salt Spring, with its strong component of people wanting to support organic growing, sustainable development, and ethical business, McLeod foresaw an excellent opportunity.

“I did quite a bit of research and realized yes, it would be a viable business,” McLeod says. “I also realized coffee is an amazing product and involves so many aspects of life: like farming, which I have an interest in, environmental issues, social issues, being able to travel, which we like to do – all those things were wrapped up in there. And then also so many people drink coffee it was a great tool to let them know about organic and fair trade values.”

When they first started roasting beans here in the spring of 1996, organic coffee was available from just two sources, Mexico and Nicaragua, and it was “before fair trade was even on the radar”. The company kept asking their California-based importer to find more organic sources, and eventually they got one in Sumatra. Nowadays, all of their coffee is certified organic and there are “many, many” coffees available, but as McLeod notes, they were the real pioneers, and had to wait for the industry and the marketplace to catch up with them. It was a similar type of thing when it came to Fair Trade. McLeod says that SS Coffee Co. has done a lot to build awareness of Fair Trade issues and to build good relationships with coffee farmers and cooperatives. When the Fair Trade

organization Trans Fair became available to Canadians in 1998, they were one of the first five or six to register; now there are a couple hundred licensed businesses.

As most of our readers probably know, with Fair Trade practices more money goes to farmer because the middleman is taken out. Oxfam estimates that the farmer who grows the beans often gets less than 10% of what the consumer pays for coffee. According to the SS Coffee Co.’s web site:

Before the organization of Coffee Cooperatives, coffee farmers were at the mercy of intermediary traders called Coyotes. Coyotes make up an integral part of the local villages. They act as bankers, provide local transportation system, and often own the general store. This virtual monopoly allows them to control nearly all the economic activities of a village. They offer loans to peasants but usually on the condition that farmers sell them their coffee at reduced prices and repay their loans at extremely high interest rates.

Farmer-run cooperatives work with fair trade organizations to bypass these unethical intermediaries and receive a better share. This is obviously more desirable for an ethically-centered business practice, but it isn’t always easy. The cost of paying a licensing fee to TransFair Canada for using the Fair Trade logo has at times made running the SS Coffee Co. at least a bit challenging. However, while McLeod knows they may not reach the level of profitability of a large corporation, he feels it is more important to be doing the right thing.

As McLeod explains, the day-to-day running of the business to meet ethical and ecological concerns is of huge importance to the company. This means things like using

SS Coffee Biodiesel-powered truck

� The Acorn - Newsletter of the Salt Spring Island Conservancy

The breadth and depth of my ignorance continues to surprise me, though others have come to expect it. For example, I was reading Arthur Sweet’s “Islands In Trust” this fall and came across his passing mention of Hilary Brown. How, I wonder, could I have thought and talked about the Islands Trust all these years and not know of her?

Hilary Newitt Brown is a woman who speaks her mind, and it is a mind worth speaking. Early in the 1970s she spoke well and forcefully about the need for a public body nurturing and protecting BC’s interests in the unique archipelago known as the Gulf Islands. Her reward - occasionally punishment - was to be appointed chair of the General Trust in 1974, mandated to implement the brand new Islands Trust legislation. Salt Spring Island’s own Marc Holmes served with her that year as vice-chair. (Jean and the late Marc Holmes are longtime Conservancy members.) Ms. Brown’s remarks to the Trustees at their first meeting, hopeful and practical, set the tone for a bonnie start.

How did the right person pop up at this fleeting, crucial beginning of the Islands Trust?

Hilary Brown, born in Scotland in 1909, was blessed with parents who taught her the importance of a good education and the responsibilities of active citizenship. She learned thoroughly. She was at the University of Frankfurt studying languages and history, as the Nazis rose to power. She forged a strong partnership and friendship there with Harrison Brown, journalist and anti-war activist. They married. They weren’t appreciated by Adolph Hitler. Forced to leave Europe, the Brown’s settled on Hornby Island in 1937. (Hornby Island? How in the world...? There is a story there, if I knew it.)

1937 also brought Hilary Brown’s first book to the public. “Women Must Choose” is a study of women in democratic, socialist and fascist states. Her second book, “Half of Humanity,” carried a North American perspective on the tasks ahead for both men and women if the world hoped to avoid further wars. To round out her publishing career, Ms. Brown found time for studies in China which came to fruition in “Tomorrow’s Ancestors,” regarding that nation’s elderly.

Hilary Brown is alert to the need for reforms at every geographic and political scale. Local issues aren’t “beneath” her; to the contrary, she embraces them with heart and body as well as the intellect. Hilary and Harrison Brown homesteaded on their chosen island, naming it “Heron Rocks.” They founded a co-op store and credit union on Hornby Island and helped to establish Elderhousing “Village” within walking distance of the store. Hilary represented BC in The Womens’ Institute and Voice of Women, and worked for Oxfam.

In Her Debt: Hilary Brown

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The Green Pilgrims Guide to the Southern Gulf Islands is a 70-page, 4”x 9” book held in a larger, book-shape folder containing brochures with maps for the larger islands in one pocket and a notepad in the other.

The guide tells the broad story of the southern Gulf Islands, from their formation through eons of change to the life forms and communities that now call it home. It tells readers where to look for sites and information of particular interest, to nature-lovers.

This guidebook is designed to travel tidily, and to make a great keepsake. It’s for islanders themselves, as well as the perfect gift for company and clients who’ve been here or family and friends we’d like to woo.

Green Pilgrims are tourists with a difference. Whether far afield, in their own back yards, or making an armchair tour, they look for what’s special about a place. They’re already primed to revere nature, but can benefit from a brief natural history overview of an area and some key defining details. Green Pilgrims can then make their own personalized tour of southern Gulf Islands’ nature, paying their respects to such things as:• the forms and colours

of arbutus trees, no two alike;

• myriad mosses sending up calyptras when the rains come;

• sandstone sculptings on massive and Lilliputian scales;

• Garry oak meadow rarities, surviving despite native and non-native invaders;

• California quail, Mexican turkey vultures, Scotch broom, and Himalayan blackberries, all relatively new to the islands and loving them;

• Star-bright nights, rich with subtle and sudden sounds…There’s more, worlds within worlds more.Resources abound for travellers. This guide points

readers in the right directions, with an eye to keeping them light on their feet, ever open to what’s available and happening, while staying light on the islands themselves.

Cost: $25, including taxes; $5 goes to the Salt Spring Conservancy for copies they sell. To get $5 off the $25 purchase price of the new Green Pilgrims Guide to the Southern Gulf Islands, go to the Conservancy office at #201 Upper Ganges Centre, 338 Lower Ganges Road, Tues-Thurs 10 am. - 3pm.

For more information, check out www.greenpilgrims.com or call Brenda Guiled at 653-4722.

Green Pilgrims Guide

Inside SSIC

�Autumn 2006

Ashley Hilliard

photo by Maxine Leichter

Deborah Miller is a new Board member but she is far from new to the Conservancy. She has been on the Education Committee for several years. Her enthusiasm for the Education Committee and the Schools program is not surprising: she was a professional environmental educator before her recent retirement.

Deborah has been teaching senior Biology, science, English and other subjects on Salt Spring Island since she moved here as a beginning teacher in 1971! While raising three boys, and teaching she also chaired the Environmental Educators’ section of the BC Teachers’ Federation and advocated for environmental education to be incorporated into the school curriculum.

Deborah’s expertise and contacts have been a tremendous benefit to the Conservancy’s Schools Program. While she was still teaching, she promoted it and got other teachers involved. Since retiring, she has succeeded Kate Leslie as the Schools Coordinator and has written the curriculum for the new program for grade 4 and 5 students at Channel Ridge this fall. Deborah has also volunteered to be the next Chair of the Conservancy’s Education Committee. (Those are the folks that put on those marvelous Friday night education programs!) Now that she is retired, Deborah is hoping to also have time for hiking, painting, and kayaking, reading, gardening.

Deborah wants to thank Conservancy Education event supporters for their donations at the door. These donations cover the costs of the meeting rooms, snacks and speaker’s transportation. She also invites you to help the Schools program which enables SSI Elementary and Middle School students to learn through directed experiences about our island’s natural places, an opportunity they would not have without help from our wonderful volunteers. If you can help, contact Deborah at 537-4797.

Last spring, when Ashley Hilliard retired after a 29 year career as a lawyer in Vancouver, he moved to Salt Spring Island. One of the first things he did was to volunteer his help to the Conservancy.

Ashley and his wife Wendy have been coming to Salt Spring since the 1980’s and purchased 13 acres of land in 1989, on which they built their “island get-away”. A member of the Conservancy for many years, Ashley has been concerned about conservation issues all his life. Now, he says he is glad to be able to contribute towards environmental protection in a more hands-on way. He selected the Conservancy because he saw how well we are working to protect natural areas on our island and thought his skills could contribute to our work.

His first volunteer position was with the Covenant Committee, where his legal expertise has been very helpful. We are pleased that he has now joined the Boardof Directors and is serving on the Executive as Vice President.

Having a large forested property is giving Ashley and Wendy another opportunity to protect at least their piece of our island. Their house was designed to minimize its footprint on the land. Trees from the site were incorporated into the structure. A combined well/rainwater collection system supplies domestic water. Ashley and Wendy have also joined the ranks of “baby broomers” and have enlisted with their neighbours in the endless battle against this noxious weed.

Ashley sees the Conservancy, with its dedicated membership, as being in a unique position to help address the pressures that Salt Spring’s popularity is placing on our natural environment. That’s our job in a nutshell! Ashley’s help is certainly appreciated.

Deborah Miller

photo by Maxine Leichter

Inside SSIC

10 The Acorn - Newsletter of the Salt Spring Island Conservancy

Three New Sharp-tailed Snake Sites

Three landowners in the north end of Salt Spring have found the endangered sharp-tailed snake this spring and early summer. All of the landowners who identified the snake had attended a neighbourhood meeting or talk on the snake. The three new sites almost double the number of known sites for this extremely elusive snake on the island. The Salt Spring Island Conservancy has been educating landowners as part of its Species at Risk Stewardship project, and these new sightings come as a result of outreach to landowners and neighbourhood gatherings near the snake’s known locations on Salt Spring. The landowners are given tips on how to identify the snakes and monitor artificial cover objects (ACO’s) in likely habitat identified by snake experts. The sightings were all verified by a digital photo. Sharp-tailed snakes are found in only a few locations in BC, and all sites on the Gulf Islands are located on private land, which means that they are unprotected by law. The future of the snakes depends on landowners to voluntary protect their habitat.

Sharp-tailed snakes are non-venomous and completely harmless to humans. They may be confused with juvenile garter snakes but can be distinguished by the sharply pointed scale at the tip of their tail, and the distinctive black and white banding on their belly. Adult sharp-tailed snakes are brown in colour, about as thick as a pencil, and up to 30 cm long, which makes them one of the smallest snakes in BC. Hatchlings are bright reddish brown and the size of large earthworms.

Sharp-tailed snakes are most active in early spring and fall. During the hot and dry periods in the summer they are hiding under ground. Even when they are active near the surface they are rarely found on the surface but hide under rocks, rotting logs, or debris. They sometimes venture out at night.

Garter snakes give birth to live young, but sharp-tailed snakes lay eggs. Females lay between three and five eggs, and deposit them underground or in cracks between rocks. Because hatchings depend on the sun’s heat, sharp-tailed snakes use south/southwest facing rocky slopes or small openings in Douglas-fir/arbutus forests for nesting, so it is important to protect such habitat.

Humans and sharp-tailed snakes often live near each other, which means that snakes can become victims of cars, weedeaters, cats, and indirectly, a loss of their habitat to construction activities, including backyard projects. “Tidying” a property can also threaten its habitat. Gardeners may be pleased to learn that small slugs are most

likely the favourite food of the sharp-tailed snake – an added incentive to provide suitable habitat.

Salt Spring Conservancy’s project Habitat Protection and Stewardship of Species at Risk has received $40,930 in grants from the Bullitt Foundation and the Government of Canada Habitat Stewardship Program for Species at Risk. Now that we are entering another period of activity for this endangered snake it’s time to keep your eyes peeled. If you think you have seen a sharp-tailed snake, please try to take a photograph and send it to: ssiconservancy@saltspring.com or phone the office with a description.

If you would like to be involved in this project, or just want to learn more about this elusive snake, please call Karen Hudson at the Conservancy office: 538-0318.– Karen Hudson and Christian Englestoft

Stewardship

Recent neighbourhood sharp-tailed snake meeting

11Autumn 2006

Nancy Achilles Paul Adams Chris Anderson Rita & Leon Aptekmann Birgit & Robert Bateman Maureen Bendick David Borrowman Nancy Braithwaite Debbie & Harry Burton Grace & Pat Byrne Deborah Cran Bill Curtin Dorothy Cutting Susan Evans Don & Fiona Flook Jim & Noni Fogarty Jean Gelwicks Sharon Glover W. Thomas Gossett, Jr. Donald Gunn Ted Harrison Frances Hill Gary Holman John, Anne & Sara Humphries Gavin Johnston Charles KahnNona, Sada & Gordon Keel

David KermanJean KingJuliette & Rick LaingPeter LambWalton LangfordIlse LeaderSam LightmanHeather MartinSharon McColloughCate McEwenMaureen MilburnArt MortonJudy NorgetAlisa PearseAnton, Eva & Karen PedersenBriony PennAndrea RankinCarole ReinerAnn RichardsonMargaret SchubartArt & Marg SimonsJudi StevensonBill TurnerBob & Judy WeedenNicola WhestonDoug WilkinsIrene & Tom Wright

New friends bless us with fresh perspectives; longstanding friends give the gift of loyalty. Checking back to our first year of reliable records (1997) we discovered that 70 people are now completing their 10th consecutive year as participants in our Conservancy. Among them, 17 have been directors and many have volunteered in other ways. Let’s thank all these long-time friends with a smile and greeting when next we meet.

Inside SSIC

Ten-year Membersa donation by a generous Conservancy member.

The Conservancy is proud of our school program. We are proud of the job Kate Leslie did with the first school program two years ago at the middle school level, and then last school year the elementary component of the school program. We are proud of Deborah Miller who ran last year’s Stewards in Training program at the middle school and who taught this autumn’s program to 4/5 students. We are especially proud of the 50+ volunteers who altogether volunteered almost 1300 hours of their time to the program. With out their commitment and passion this program would not be possible.

We are so happy we can continue to offer this great program. Thank you to everyone involved.– Jean Gelwicks

Continued from page 1

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

Andreas Vogt Nature Reserve NotesPlant Assays: Two years ago student aide Yvette Ruesen spent three months on the Reserve laying out plant transects, installing study plots and creating a strategy for counting plant species. Her time didn’t allow work on the south end of the property. This year Robin Annschild extended Yvette’s work.

As a researcher thoroughly grounded in plant taxonomy and ecology Robin has given us site descriptions as a base from which changes in AVNR flora can be sketched. Thanks to her efforts we now can track changes and consider them in relation to climate change, human activity, invasions of aliens like carpet burweed, and other shifts.

You’ll see white wooden stakes at intervals on the property. Please leave them where they are, and don’t walk on or disturb the area in a 25 metre circle around them. Plants and science both can be fragile!

Rot, Wot?: One of the features students study on the AVNR is “wildlife trees,” which are dead or dying trees used by animals and other organisms as sources of nutrients, moisture and protection. Once fallen, the trees enhance the soil as they rot.

The Galiano Conservancy kindly gave us a copy of their

compact disk “Let It Rot” (Gulf Islands Film and Television School), which depicts efforts to help a cut-over forest area develop toward old-forest status. (Why we want forests to grow old fast, while we resist the same process vigorously, I’ll never know.) Part of the process involves spreading logging debris instead of windrowing and burning it.

We encourage you to bring some friends to the SSI Conservancy to view the presentation (6.36 minutes). Please make arrangements with Karen Hudson (538 0318) at the office in advance.– Charles Dorworth

the BC Hydro Green Energy Certificates, using bio-diesel for trucks, and encouraging the use of travel mugs (which they sell in environmentally friendly corn plastic and stainless steel).

Another very important aspect is providing “shade grown” coffees, which contributes to sustainable agriculture. In its natural habitat, coffee grows as part of a mixed forest. The SS Coffee web site explains, “Many of the larger “modern” coffee farms have elected to remove shade trees and plant more “sun-tolerant” coffee varieties in dense stands for the hopes of higher production. While higher production is likely, the ecological price tag is higher on these farms due to the increased dependence on herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizers as well as increased soil erosion and water runoff.” Using non-hybrid varieties grown in their natural setting allows farmers to keep the bio-diverse forest intact. Bird habitats are restored, which can be very beneficial in keeping out harmful insects and disease. The leaves of other forest trees provide important nitrogen and fiber to the soil. All of this also results in a better tasting bean.

It’s quite likely that the Salt Spring Coffee Co.’s high quality product is the root of their success. With no set plan for growth and almost zero marketing over the past two years, the company has recently expanded through BC Ferry locations and into Vancouver, with a café location on Main Street. Exciting news is a new café slated to open at UBC in January. McLeod went to Vancouver September 21 to accept an award through the Georgia Straight magazine for best Fair Trade coffee in Vancouver. In addition, the company will appear in Waking Up the West Coast, an upcoming guide to conscientious consumer choices.

When asked about the company’s future plans, McLeod says that generally, all they want is to keep doing what they are already doing, but to do it better. “We want to create better relationships with farmers and get to know them better; to continue doing work in the community. But really we just want to do the best job we can do.”– Elizabeth Nolan

Continued from page �

Inside SSIC

Photo by Karen Hudson

1�Autumn 2006

After admiring it in our garage for a few days, I contacted the Lady Minto Foundation and the timing was just right, for they were in the planning stages of a palliative care unit and garden and were delighted to be offered the bench. I am very pleased that it is now incorporated into a very well thought out garden, where one can sit and look at, and listen to, the lovely fountain.

“Many thanks to all of you at the conservancy for your hard work and dedication.”

Hilary Brown is now an alert 97. She seems like the kind of person I’d like to be when I grow up, vital, passionate, and possessing the kind of muscular hope that admits no impossibilities. BRAVO!, Hilary Brown.

Editor’s note: I’m much indebted to Meg Parrish, a neighbour and friend of Ms. Brown’s, who told her I wanted to do this brief profile, obtained permission, and discussed a draft with her.

Thanks, too, to Andrea Lebowitz for sending her longer piece written to nominate Hilary for the Therese Casgrain Volunteer Award. Andrea also improved a draft.– Bob Weeden

Inside SSIC

Andreas Vogt Nature Reserve NotesThis year’s winner of the Garden Bench raffle is Maria Emerson of the Habitat Conservation Trust Fund. Maria had been buying tickets for the Conservancy raffle for the past several years on her visits to the Ganges summer market.

She relates, “It was always a good souvenir for me when I visited Salt Spring. The benches are amazing works of art and I have always respected the work of the Conservancy, so the gamble is a good one either way. I would leave the market always hoping I would get a call.”

While she never made it to this year’s Fall Fair to buy up the last of the tickets as she promised one Conservancy volunteer, Maria got lucky and one of her tickets was drawn. She is thrilled to have won and would like to thank the artist who made the beautiful bench for his donation and generosity to the Conservancy.

Last year’s winner, Susan Harland, has donated her bench to the Lady Minto Hospital, where it will be a welcome addition to the Palliative Care Unit.

She writes, “After what seemed like a lifetime of bitterly cold winters and sweltering buggy summers in Ontario, we decided we had had enough and started looking around for a less onerous climate, preferably one where a shovel and bug spray were not to be seen. A good friend recommended we visit Salt Spring Island before making up our mind where to live. He had spent time on the island visiting his brother who was ill in the Lady Minto hospital and thought the Island’s friendly and warm atmosphere would appeal to us. He was right, for after we had been on Salt Spring for just three albeit hectic days, we left owning a house near Vesuvius. Once we had settled in, the friend happened to mention that if I ever decided to do any voluntary work, could I direct it towards improving the garden at the hospital. During his time visiting his brother there, they had found the garden a restful place to sit. Shortly after, by a stroke of luck, I found quite to my surprise that I had won the lovely driftwood bench that the SSI Conservancy had raffled last September.

Garden Benches Find New Homes

Continued from page �

Susan Harland and Executive Director Karen Hudson

Yellow montaine Violet - Federally listed threatened species found on Salt Spring in Spring 2006 Photo: Robin Annschild

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

Inside SSIC

This year, the Conservancy has significantly improved its ability to protect the natural environment by establishing the position of staff biologist and hiring our former part time biologist Robin Annschild to fill the position. She is well qualified, having a BSc in Environmental Biology with a minor in ecological agriculture from McGill University. She attended the MacDonald Campus which specializes in agricultural and environmental sciences.

Robin originally came to Salt Spring in 2000 to take a temporary contract with the Conservancy’s first Stewardship Program and she has been working for the Conservancy on and off ever since. In the process, she has become an expert on local ecosystems and plant life.

Robin’s work is divided among the Conservancy’s committees. She helps the Conservancy’s Schools Program, monitors covenants held by the Conservancy, and is

conducting a vegetation survey of the Andreas Vogt Nature Reserve. She also does landowner contact and site evaluation for the current Stewardship Project.

In 2005, Robin had a son, Lugh (pronounced Lou). Robin and her partner Mik were deeply touched by the help and support given by their island friends when she had serious complications after giving birth. What a pleasure it is to see Lugh on Robin’s back at Conservancy events.

In addition to being a mum, partner and biologist, Robin keeps a large vegetable garden and is one of the founding members of the SSI Biodiesel Collective. She enthusiastically spreads the word about the availability of biodiesel

at Pretzel Motors and she had her own car modified to run not only on bio-diesel but also on unprocessed vegetable oils. Did you know that using biodiesel helps fight Climate Change and reduces exposure to hazardous fumes?

Robin says she is honoured by the trust and generosity shown by the property owners who welcome her onto their land to talk about stewardship. She feels privileged to be able to see these special island treasures. We are privileged to have Robin doing this important work to protect our island.– Maxine Leichter

Lugh and Robin

weight of snowmobiles that pack the winter snow cover. British Columbia’s enormous expanses of inland forest are being chewed to bits by beetles that love warm summers. The biggest trees in the world could succumb to excessive zeal by Smokey Bear. It is illusory, even dangerous, to map “sensitive ecosystems” for special attention when they may be no more likely to go belly up than run-of-the-mill woods. Show me an insensitive ecosystem and I’ll unplug my mike. Meanwhile, let’s just agree that some combinations of plants, animals and sites are rarer than others.

Worthwhile ideas usually are complex. We invent a word or phrase to stand for them because sound bites, photo-ops and high-speed internet browsing demand it. Following our favourite adage that “Anything worth doing is worth overdoing” we repeat the term often and thoughtlessly, finally making it worthless. I sincerely hope “authentic community” doesn’t meet that fate, flowering beautifully where first seeded but ending up scattered carelessly or mischievously where it doesn’t belong, another weed we can’t get rid of.– Bob Weeden

Continued from page 2

Dr. David Nagorsen will present an illustrated talk about bats. The former Curator of Mammals for the Royal BC Museum, Nagorsen is the co-author of Bats of British Columbia, and he has done extensive research on bats throughout the Province. On Saturday morning following the talk, there will be a special session to cut and assemble wooden bat houses which you can mount on your house exterior or in nearby trees to encourage these valuable insect predators.

Please mark these talks on your calendars, and pass along the information to friends. This fall/winter’s lineup is certain to answer all kinds of natural history questions and provide a wealth of information about the furry cohabitants of our island and Province.

Continued from page 6

Robin Annschild - Staff Biologist

1�Autumn 2006

Editor: Bob WeedenLayout: 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:http://saltspring.gulfislands.com/conservancy

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 Work (typing, filing or

computer work)r Information Table at Saturday

Market (May through September)r Education Programsr 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 $Laptop computer Field guidesSmall refrigerator 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 to say “Credit #58” at the check-out at Thrifty’s. 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

Robin Annschild - Staff Biologist

40026325Ganges PO Box 722Salt Spring Island BC

V8K 2W3