All posts by : Moralea Milne

Spring is emerging all over Metchosin among the 2400+ living species (thank-you BioBlitz team) with whom we share this remarkable region.  And like our long-awaited spring, the work of the Metchosin Foundation is picking up speed.

Please mark June 3 in your calendar, and join us for our Annual General Meeting at 7:00 pm at the Community House. Dr. Werner Kurz will be the featured speaker to address today’s challenges of Thinking Globally; Acting Locally.  He is a Metchosin resident and internationally renowned scientist who has greatly expanded our understanding of forests, carbon cycling, and climate change. Currently he is focusing on understanding the effects of projected climate change and what we can do to both reduce impacts and adapt.

Please bring your energies, ideas and questions to the meeting.  We will review the activities of the past year, plans for the future, and elect our board and three new directors.

With the weather improving, it’s time to enjoy our trails, rivers and beaches. The decks of Nature Cards developed by the MF for youth in the early grades are proving popular, as teachers and parents add adventure and a little competition to hikes by challenging their youth to search for emerging species. These picture-based, waterproof environmental awareness cards were developed specifically for Metchosin but are proving popular across southern Vancouver Island.  Contact us if you would like some.

While you are hiking, keep in mind the photographic competition Metchosin Naturally, Seasons Through the Lens being co-sponsored by MACCA and the Metchosin Foundation.  Categories are landscapes and seascapes; plants, lichens and mushrooms; birds and insects; and wild animals with the common theme of biodiversity. The contest and exhibition will take place from October 28 to November 10.  For further details go to: http://metchosinbiodiversity.com/menu_photocontest.php

If you have a student in your home graduating from high school this year, please make sure they are aware of our four $750 scholarships being made available.  Categories include Environmental Stewardship, Academic Achievement, Community Citizenship and a Beecher Bay scholarship that encompasses all of these areas.  Applications are available on-line and through Belmont, Royal Bay and Edward Milne secondary schools as well as through the Beecher Bay First Nation office.

University of Victoria Biology Professor Dr. Neville Winchester is a board member of the International Canopy Network.  That group of scientists has expressed concern about the startling drop of insect biomass across many parts of the world. The Foundation will be supporting his work in Metchosin. A UVic honours student will be starting in May/June to set out and monitor insect traps, to contribute data to a much larger overview.

For further information, please contact us through e-mail:  contact@metchosinfoundation.ca   Your donations are tax-deductible.

Nearly six acres of ecologically sensitive environment, bordering Sooke Hills Wilderness Park, will be preserved in perpetuity thanks to the generosity of Nitya and Scott Harris, and the collaborative support of the Metchosin Foundation, the Habitat Acquisition Trust (HAT) and the Cowichan Land Trust.

“Scott and I call this area Calypso Woods because of the profusion of exquisite calypso orchids that come up every spring,” says Nitya. “After nearly four years of coordinated work with partners, the Conservation Covenant is presently being registered in the land titles office.”  This Douglas-fir forest acreage holds the headwaters of Bilston Creek that eventually flows over Sitting Lady Falls into Witty’s Lagoon, serving as a safe corridor for large carnivores, elk and other wildlife moving through the area.

The Harris land covenant is the latest result of the Metchosin Foundation’s mandate to protect land, native wildlife and plants, many of which are globally at risk, for future generations.  Since its incorporation as a charitable society in 2008, the Foundation has worked with several landowners, contributing both financially and in-kind to create legacies of ecological sustainability in Metchosin.

A Conservation Covenant is a legal tool and an enforceable promise that has been widely utilized by property owners in partnership with the Metchosin Foundation to protect their land’s ecological legacy for future generations.  The most important aspect of a Conservation Covenant is that it stays with the land in perpetuity.  Any individual or party who purchases or inherits the land also takes on the original promise.

In BC, a number of land conservancy organizations act as covenant holders to ensure the terms of the agreement are being followed. In this municipality, the Metchosin Foundation works with the Habitat Acquisition Trust (HAT) and the The Land Conservancy (TLC).  Each covenant can be tailored to suit the unique attributes of an individual piece of property and the requirements of the owner who grants the covenant.  One might, for example, limit land use to organic farming or to sustainable forestry.  Another option might make sure that undeveloped land stays undeveloped.    Landowners, especially those involved in estate planning, should consider using this legal tool to seal their bond with the future.

For anyone beginning to consider Christmas gift donations to the Metchosin Foundation in the names of close relatives or friends, unique gift cards will be available. These will feature visually striking photos by Beverley Hall of our region’s natural beauty and will state that:  “I have made a donation to the Metchosin Foundation on your behalf of $___.”

The fifth Metchosin MycoBlitz took place on Saturday, November 4, 2017. A sharp frost and a light snow on Friday, combined with an unusually bad year for mushrooms in general, had the organizers of the MycoBlitz wondering whether they would find much at Metchosin’s fifth MycoBlitz event. A record crowd showed up, however, and the twenty experts and thirty helpers collected over 200 mushroom samples.  Of these 200 specimens, 155 were different species. About a third of species turned out to be new to Metchosin BioBlitz/MycoBlitz records.

As in previous years, the mushroom seekers met in front of the District of Metchosin offices at 9:00 on the first Saturday of November. They divided themselves into three teams and mushroom identification experts were dispersed among the teams. The teams were assigned to travel to three Metchosin locations: Camp Thunderbird, Pearson College, and Camosun College’s van der Meer property. (A big thanks to the YMCA-YWCA, Pearson College, and Camosun College for allowing the teams onto their properties.)  The teams left about 9:30 am and returned to the starting location about noon.  MycoBlitz planners Moralea Milne and Joel Ussery stayed behind to prepare for the return of the groups.

The teams brought their carefully wrapped specimens into the District of Metchosin Council Chambers and the twenty experts set themselves to the task of sorting and identifying all the mushrooms brought back by the three teams. While sorting the mushrooms, they enjoyed soups (thanks, Karyn Woodland and Mairi MacKinnon!) and pizza donated by My-Chosen pizza. The rest of the group went down hill to the fire hall to have bag lunches, eat popcorn, and watch the “Andy and Kem Fungal Follies,” a collection of the best internet clips of mushrooms. Guests returned to the Council Chambers at 2:00 pm to look over the collections (Heard many times: “is it edible?”)

The speaker and resource person for MycoBlitz 2017 was Roo Vandegrift of the University of Oregon. His talk in Metchosin on the Friday night before the MycoBlitz (session 97 in Metchosin’s popular Talk and Walk series) covered the science and variety of the often-overlooked ascomycete mushrooms. Roo, brought to the area by the South Vancouver Island Mycological Society (SVIMS) and the Vancouver Mycological Society (VMS), ended up spending almost two weeks in BC working in labs and helping mycological types learn more about Xylarias, an ascomycete group that occupies most of Roo’s research time. In Victoria, Roo teamed up with Brenda Callan, a colleague at the Pacific Forestry Centre. Roo and Brenda identified for the MycoBlitz more than a dozen small ascomycete mushrooms that had not been recorded in Metchosin before.

MycoBlitz 2017 was fortunate to have on the search teams several good photographers. They have graciously agreed to make digital versions some of their pictures from the day available on this web site. To see these pictures, go to this MycoBlitz web page at http://metchosinbiodiversity.com.

The Metchosin Biodiversity Project, organizer of the MycoBlitz, acknowledges the support of the Metchosin Foundation in helping make this year’s MycoBlitz possible.

It is with great gratitude and respect that the Metchosin Foundation has received a bequest in the amount of $20,000 from the estate of long-time Metchosin resident Professor Charles Priester.  We who serve on the board of this Foundation will honour this bequest as his true bond with the future of this land and community.

Professor Priester passed away in February 2016 at the age of 80 years, having gained great distinction in the areas of Economics and Finance, travelled the world and contributed greatly to the community of Metchosin.   His wife Valerie Cochran was a dedicated community volunteer, including serving as editor of this Metchosin Muse for many years.  Both of these strong, accomplished people were strong supporters of the work of Pearson International College.  In fact, after Valerie passed away in September of 2014, Charles established the Valerie Cochran Memorial Fund to be a key resource for students from around the world who find themselves suddenly faced with a crisis that demands their immediate return home.  The Metchosin Foundation has been managing this memorial fund in partnership with Pearson College administrators for the past two years.

This most recent and generous bequest will support and enhance the work of the Metchosin Foundation to promote healthy lands, healthy waters and a healthy caring community.    Educating our young people is among the most vital services we have identified over the past year.  An emphasis on education over the past year has resulted in a range of supports.  For the youngest students in school, the MF has produced boxed sets of 50 Nature Cards featuring the most common plants in this region, as well as backpacks containing magnifying glasses, tweezers and storage vials to help these junior explorers sample the forest environment in which we live.  Scholarships in four key areas have been made available in 2017 to four graduating students living in Metchosin or Beecher Bay who are seeking to continue their education in a range of fields: Cyrus Dinh, Savannah Askew, Abbey Christ-Rowling and Stacey Charles. For adults, we support the monthly Walk ‘n Talk sessions focusing on key environmental issues in our region (next scheduled for Sept 22 and 23).

As always, we work with land owners who wish to preserve their sensitive ecologies in perpetuity by assisting them with the legal costs and labour involved to establish conservation covenants.  Currently, we are working in a two-year partnership with the Habitat Acquisition Trust (HAT) to support and advise Metchosin landowners whose properties are adjacent to running water to effectively manage and protect the integrity of those ecologies.

We encourage anyone in Metchosin to include a bequest to support our work as you undertake your estate planning.   Please refer to our website at www.metchosinfoundation.ca and note that we are a registered charity.