We’re glad that the rains have come over the past few days, as the fire danger was getting very high. It is incredibly beautiful from the top of the Ridge View Hamlet area looking down over Shawnigan Lake, but the dryness of the land is still a concern. We have always known that Community Fire Hardening would be a significant part of the Elkington Forest hamlet project.
This past week we learned from Dan Derby of the CVRD Protective Services what conditions will be required by the CVRD in order to be included within the Malahat fire service area. The exact list of equipment that we will need to have on site, and the level of volunteer training will be identified shortly.
Last week, we also met with a solid group of timber frame contractors - Macdonald and Lawrence of Cobble Hill. They are an experienced group of seasoned framers, and they build the most beautiful timber frame structures. See their website www.macdonaldandlawrence.ca. They are also the significant push behind the preservation and restoration of the Kinsol Trestle. We hope to be able to have this company as one of the featured contractors for buyers of our homes at Elkington Forest. Look for more information in the weeks to come.
Filed under: Elkington Forest on August 11th, 2008 | No Comments »
Last night the Board of the Cowichan Valley Regional District passed a motion to draft the bylaws for the rezoning of the Elkington Forest property, and to present the bylaws to the Board for 1st and 2nd Reading. At that upcoming meeting the CVRD will set a date for the Public Hearing.
It may seem that this is a long time in coming, but it is quite quick by CVRD standards - and I think that the CVRD staff would agree with my assessment of timing.
Recently, Jack Basey, Barry Gates and I have been meeting with a number of organizations about fire suppression and fire hardening initiatives that would be valuable and should be incorporated into the program at Elkington Forest. We went to see the thinning regime that has been undertaken within the CRD Watershed, and learned how the thinning acts as a fire break adjacent to residential dwellings. The overall impression is that the thinned area looks like a park. We will be undertaking similar thinning exercises next to roads and around the hamlets in order to prevent any fires from jumping from the ground to the crowns of the trees.
On a similar note, within the past few weeks we have hired a crew of tree trimmers and thinners from Beecher Bay First Nation and Malahat First Nation. The four or five young people from the two local bands have been clearing trails, cleaning up the excess dead wood on the forest floor, and chipping the remains for trail material. This has been done both for reasons of fire safety and ease of access on site. We want to thank the foreman, Clarence, and his crew for a job well done.
We have also been taking more and more people out to the site to see what a beautiful and sensitive location we have the opportunity to conserve. If you would like a tour of the site, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Filed under: CVRD approvals, Elkington Forest, Forestry on July 10th, 2008 | No Comments »
Great News! The Cowichan Valley Citizen’s Sarah Simpson has written an article about Living Forest Communities and Elkington Forest. It was featured in the May 28, 2008 edition of the Cowichan Valley Citizen and it available online at canada.com. Titled “Development to preserve forestland”, this article was written in response to the public information meeting hosted by the CVRD on Thursday, May 22. We are very happy to have such a great response to our presentation. Thank you so much to Sarah Simpson and the Cowichan Valley Citizen for their great work!
Check out the pdf available with this blog entry…
Development to preserve forestland - The Cowichan Valley Citizen
Filed under: Elkington Forest on June 3rd, 2008 | No Comments »
Elkington Forest - Last Thursday, we had quite an interesting meeting at the Shawnigan Lake Community Centre with an open house at 5:00 pm and a presentation at 7:00 pm. The meeting was well attended (especially the open house) and the people who attended the presentation asked some very good questions about the Elkington Forest proposal. At first the community was concerned and somewhat sceptical. Whether people said it or not, they all seemed to have the same question on their mind - “What is this strange development concept with 85% of the land being conserved?” But over the course of the Question and Answer period, the team that was in attendance with me answered questions about ecosystem-based forestry, geo-thermal utilities, housing design guidelines, agro-forestry opportunities, the role of the Trans-Canada Trail in the design of the hamlet, etc. At the end of the presentation, a number of people had shifted from being cautious and sceptical to openly supportive. Perhaps the two most important features of the evening were; 1) the history of the Elkington family and their laudable ecological sensibility since 1945, and 2) the three power point slides that showed graphically the extent of the clear-cutting in the Shawnigan Lake watershed from 1999 - 2005 - 2007. It is pretty devastating. Clearly, we need a financial model to pay for the on-going work of conservation. We think that Living Forest Communities is just that model.I want to thank all those who attended the meeting. 
http://www.canada.com/cowichanvalleycitizen/news/story.html?id=a49c25ab-68a4-400f-b096-fc1fa2beac9b
Filed under: Elkington Forest on May 30th, 2008 | No Comments »
Well, its about time. After almost a year of working through the rezoning process with the Cowichan Valley Regional District, we have decided that it would be valuable to record our progress and our thoughts, as we continue along.
This is the story of not just the rezoning of a single parcel of land, but the creation of a timely concept for Vancouver Island. It is a new model for forest conservation and smart growth land use management. This is about the creation of conservation communities or hamlets that are established on a very small footprint, within the very forests that the members of the community have come to protect.
Our first presentation to the CVRD was in March, 2007, when Jack Basey, Barry Gates, Bill Turner of TLC and myself introduced the concept of Living Forest Communities to the Electoral Area Directors. The concept was well received. We asked, “Can we save the forests from industrial clear-cutting by allowing a compact cluster of housing and live/work opportunities on a small portion of the land? Can we put ecologically harvested timber resources back in the hands of the local workers in their communities? Can we consciously protect the watershed and the natural features with the highest conservation value at the same time as we build a community?”
You can read in the Elkington Forest website how we submitted for the rezoning of the 385 hectare site in July of 2007, and met with the Advisory Planning Commission in November of 2007 for a presentation of the overall concept. A couple of days later, we were advised that the APC had recommended that we proceed to the drafting of the bylaw for the rezoning of the land.
Now we are preparing for a public meeting to be held at the Shawnigan Lake Community Centre on May 22. We are looking forward to having your input because we believe that this is a community development model that can address a number of the problems currently being faced by forest communities on Vancouver Island.
Doug Makaroff
President, Living Forest Communities
Filed under: Elkington Forest on April 29th, 2008 | No Comments »