As a landowner, are you interested in maintaining the ecological integrity of your property?
If your answer is YES the Mayne Island Conservancy can offer you the following assistance:
- An initial conversation followed by a walkabout of your land to discuss your stewardship goals while pointing out valuable wildlife habitat, native plant and animal species as well as potential trouble spots
- An orthophoto map of your property
- Recommendations for achieving your stewardship goals
You will be invited to consider entering into a non-binding stewardship pledge with the Mayne Island Conservancy. This pledge outlines nine areas of stewardship that you can practice on your land. You may choose to focus on any or all of the areas listed, ranging from protecting native plants to removing invasive plants to conserving water. For its part the Mayne Island Conservancy will assist you in any way it can. The renewable stewardship pledge is for one year.
To schedule a consultation please call: 5619 and/or print out and fill in the Stewardship Pledge form available here
A Sensitive Ecosystems Workshop
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The workshop held at the Community Centre on May 16th 2010 presented an overview of the significance of land stewardship, information on the Sensitive Ecosystems Mapping project, and stewardship options. Stewardship is voluntary and ranges from awareness raising and non-binding stewardship agreements to covenants and incentive programs such as the Natural Area Protection Tax Exemption Program (NAPTEP) and the Ecological Gifts Program, which can deliver substantial tax savings in the right circumstances. |
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Land stewardship necessarily entails care for the tidal beaches, which should not be thought of as a boundary but as an interface. Common human activities have the potential to disrupt the marine ecology, not only by "carrying crude oil up and down the coast in a balloon"
| · Reduced water quality | · Nutrient run-off from land |
| · Sediments from human activities on land | · Shading by overwater structures |
| · Intensive trampling at low tide (kayak lanes) | · Dredging & filling |
| · Boating & anchoring | · Shoreline armouring (bulkheads, riprap) |
| · Intensive shellfish harvesting | · Economic impacts: fisheries, tourism |
And in response to some of these threats we can:
- Minimize the area of shoreline disturbed by construction activities
- Protect trees, shrubs and grasses near the shoreline
- Leave the site as natural as possible to prevent interruption of ocean currents and reduce the potential for beach erosion
- Protect a wide shoreline buffer of vegetation
- Consider sharing a dock to reduce their number and impacts on the near shore, or use a mooring float to tie your boat to
- Consider alternative construction practices for docks that allow sunlight to penetrate eelgrass meadows
Softshores for Shoreline Care - Saturday February 19, 2011
The Mayne Island Conservancy Society (MICS) is pleased to invite you to Softshores for Shoreline Care. The purpose of this informational workshop is to provide a forum for collaboratively deciding on next steps for marine conservation in the region. This gathering is timely because the Islands Trust recently adopted Green Shores for Homes. One of the Island Trust Fund’s long-term goals is to work with partner organizations to conserve marine ecosystems and habitats.
The workshop will be held at the Agricultural Hall from 11-4:30pm. It will be co-facilitated by Nikki Wright, Executive Director of SeaChange Marine Conservation Society and Co-Chair of the Seagrass Conservation Working Group and Leanna Boyer (MICS). Our guest speaker will be Doug Biffard, Protected Area Ecologist for the Provincial Ministry of Environment.
Nikki Wright’s presentation, Coastal Shores as Living Systems: A Softshores Approach to the BC Coast, will illustrate important coastal processes that shape the BC coastline, different shore types, and the impacts we have on them with shoreline modifications. Some alternatives to seawalls are presented.
Doug Biffard’s presentation is entitled Mapping the BC Coastline for Sensitivity to Sea Level Rise. The first step in responding to rising sea level is to identify those places along the coast that are most at risk. BC Parks has developed a shoreline sensitivity rating to identify where adaptation actions are required.
We hope you will join us for this important workshop. If you have ideas about outcomes you would like to see coming out of the workshop, please contact Leanna Boyer. Please RSVP by February 14th so that we can arrange the right amount of food. Lunch, snacks, tea and coffee will be provided for a charge of $12.
Schedule:
Sharp Tailed Snake Search
Spring is here: the wildflower meadows are getting ready to burst, and the songbirds are trilling with all their might. This is when the Sharp-tailed Snake is most active, seeking out meals of molluscs when the ground is wet, but warming. Western Painted Turtles are waking too.
"Sharpies" are a Species at Risk and we have yet to find them on Mayne!
For more information on the subject of "sharp tailed snake stewardship" please visit the Habitat Acquisition Trust 's web page
Sensitive Ecosystems on Mayne Island
