NEWS FROM NALT (Nanaimo Area Land Trust) Newsletter of the Nanaimo & Area Land Trust Society October, 2004 INSIDE: Mount Benson Update The Harewood Plains The Linley Valley NALT's Co-Op Student NALT's New Directors Another Choice in Property Conservation A Sad Farewell to LOGGING CONTINUES ON MOUNT BENSON Rob Hanelt See story, page 5 NALT'S SERVICES TO CONTINUE; OFFICE HOURS CUT Thanks to additional funding of $5,000 each from the City of Nanaimo and the RDN, and to much appreciated donations and memberships from our supporters, NALT will be able to continue providing services to the community during the final months of 2004, albeit with reduced office hours. While NALT relies first and foremost on funding support from our members and other supporters, and on the proceeds from various fundraising activities and events run by our volunteers, we struggle each year with a shortfall of funds to keep providing those basic services to the community that are not funded or supplemented by project-specific grants. At the beginning of 2004, NALT asked the City of Nanaimo for $64,000 and the RDN for $16,000, for a total of $80,000 towards supporting those core services that we provide each year. At that time, the City and the Region each responded with $16,000, providing NALT with a total of $32,000 - which left us with a shortfall of $48,000 in the projected annual budget. Throughout the year, the NALT Board, Staff and Dedicated Volunteers worked hard to make up that shortfall in various ways, including a mail-out appeal to our membership, sale of native plants and other items, small field contracts with the Ministry of Water Land & Air Protection and the Garry Oak Ecosystem Recovery Team, sharing office space and staff wages with WasteNOT, and organizing fundraising events such as Bottles for Benson and the Beer & Burger Night. As a result, the financial shortfall was reduced to just over $20,000, and NALT was able to continue to provide full services until the end of September. (Continued on page 7) News from NALT October 2004 Page 1 NEWS FROM NALT is published three or four times a year by the Nanaimo Area Land Trust NALT's Mission is: to preserve and foster the stewardship of areas of natural beauty, valuable wildlife habitat and green space in the Nanaimo region The Nanaimo and Area Land Trust Society was registered as a B.C. Society in 1995, and subsequently was WE’RE HAVING ANOTHER granted charitable tax status and the right to hold conservation covenants. BOTTLES FOR BENSON Executive Director: Gail Adrienne Office Manager: Cyndy Jefferies Covenant Coordinator: Sarah Bonar November 6, 9 AM – 4 PM Board of Directors: Diena Abdurahman Holly Blackburn Mid-Island Co-op Parking Lot Gillian Butler Scott Forrest Bowen Rd Dean Gaudry (co-chair) Barbara Hourston (co-chair) Ralph Hutchinson Bring your refundable bottles and cans to help Dale Lovick support the campaign to protect Mount Benson Mike Mann (treasurer) John Merriman Harriet Rueggeberg MOUNT BENSON VOLUNTEERS NEEDED Ron Tanasichuk This is a request to all of you out there to help me, Carra Simpson, Newsletter editor: Ken Lyall the new Volunteer Coordinator for NALT, to staff information tables for Contact us at: the campaign to preserve Mount Benson. I've booked four dates so far, and am hoping to sign people up for three-hour shifts to staff the The Nanaimo Area Land Trust tables. I can brief you about any information you need by sending you an email information sheet. The dates are as follows: Stewardship Centre Madrona Building (lower floor) Tuesday November 2nd 9.30-5.30 at Port Place Suite 8, 140 Wallace Street Friday November 5th 9.30-9.00 at Country Club Centre Nanaimo, B.C. V9R 5B1 Saturday November 6th 9.30-5.30 at Country Club Centre Saturday November 20th 9.30-5.30 at Port Place Mall (250) 714-1990 You can reply to [email protected] , or 618-1940. Thank you so much for your support. [email protected] Carra www.nalt.bc.ca News from NALT October 2004 Page 2 A PARTNERSHIP TO PROTECT do what we do best - community stewardship outreach - and this is what I am currently working HAREWOOD PLAINS on for the proposal, which must be submitted to HSP by November 5th. Gail Adrienne, NALT Executive Director The Harewood Plains is the name given to the area If this proposal is successful, NALT will carry out of mostly undeveloped land situated in the South of an education and outreach campaign targeting Nanaimo, due South of 10th Street and the specific sectors of the community who use or are Parkway and east of Harewood Mines Road. This impacted by the Harewood Plains area. Our land includes acres of rare and endangered contribution will include compiling handout wildflower meadows and is at risk of being information, making information drops to nearby subdivided for development. Last spring, the City neighbourhoods and presentations to user groups, completed a Sensitive Ecosystem Inventory that organizing guided walks during the spring confirmed the presence of at least six rare and wildflower blooms, getting neighbouring school endangered species of wildflowers in the classes involved, and possibly work parties to Harewood meadows. One of these, a small and remove invasive species. We will be supported by beautiful yellow spring flower called Lotus GOERT, and our role will be to complement Pinnatus, is found in Canada only on mid- negotiations and long-term plans being put in place Vancouver Island. by the City and the RDN. NALT has become recognized throughout the region as an agency with considerable skills and experience in conducting outreach campaigns that educate and involve the community in voluntary stewardship. Between 1997 and 2001, we partnered with the City of Nanaimo on PROJECT 2000, a citywide watershed stewardship initiative that reached nine creeks and hundreds of residents in Nanaimo. From 2001 to 2003, NALT carried out the Business Stewardship Project, targeting automotive and other businesses in the Long Lake/Diver Lake watershed - again in partnership with the City and other agencies. NALT has also carried out a small stewardship outreach initiative on Haslam Creek and the Creeks of Cedar, on contract to the RDN. Most recently, NALT was approached by GOERT to fill a similar role in their campaign to protect the Vesper Sparrow, which nests at the Nanaimo Airport (see story in the June 2004 issue of News from NALT). Lotus Pinnatus. Photo: Charles Thirkill We are pleased to be invited to participate in this Earlier this month, NALT participated in a round- initiative to protect the Harewood Plains. table planning session initiated by the Ministry of Water Land and Air Protection and hosted by the City of Nanaimo. This session was the first step to forming a joint partnership among a number of community and government interests, including the City, WLAP, NALT, GOERT (the Garry Oak Ecosystem Recovery Team), RDN, Weyerhaeuser, BC Hydro and the Nanaimo Field Naturalists. Now the City, NALT and GOERT are working on a joint proposal to the Habitat Stewardship Program (HSP) a federal funding source, for a two-year project aimed at finding ways to protect the wildflower meadows. NALT's role in this will be to News from NALT October 2004 Page 3 NALT WELCOMES NEW NALT'S CO-OP STUDENT Naira Johnston DIRECTORS My name is Naira Johnston, and I’m a biology co- Four new Directors were elected to the NALT op student from the University of Victoria, working Board of Directors at the Annual General Meeting for NALT until the end of December. Funded of the Society in June, 2004. We would like to mainly by the University’s Student Learning welcome: Internship (SLIP) grant, with top-up funding from Diena Abdurahman: A physiotherapist at the Garry Oak Ecosystem Restoration Team Nanaimo Regional Hospital, Diena studied (GOERT), I've been actively involved with NALT kinesiology and physiotherapy at Simon Fraser since early September. University and the University of Queensland in My biological focus has been mostly of the avian Australia. Diena enjoys life in Nanaimo because of kind, with interests in all aspects of ecology from the ready access to outdoor opportunities, and is native plants to habitat protection and restoration. joining NALT to help preserve what she loves My main project this fall is the development a doing the most. western bluebird nest-box program in southern Scott Forrest: A resident of Nanaimo for 22 Vancouver Island. years, Scott has been in the real estate profession The coastal population of western bluebirds has for the past five years. As a member of the been extirpated (regionally disappeared) from Chamber of Commerce, he has focused on the Vancouver Island and the mainland since the mid- development and beautification of the downtown. 1980’s, with similar losses in the northern coastal For the past three years, Scott has been chairman area of the USA. The good news is that bluebirds for the local chapter of Ducks Unlimited, and was a readily take up residency in human-made nest- key player in the NALT campaign to achieve a City boxes, and breeding pairs of western bluebirds park in the Linley Valley. have increased with the introduction of these Dale Lovick: Dale was the MLA for Nanaimo from boxes in both Washington and Oregon. With that 1986-2000, serving as Speaker of the House, in mind, a project was developed to place nest- Minister of Labour, and Minister of Aboriginal boxes in open oak/fir meadows around southern Affairs. Before being elected to the Legislature, he Vancouver Island where bluebirds used to be was an instructor at Malaspina University-College.