Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - Bruce Ellingson is this year's recipient of this year’s Jo Anne Green Award. Every year, the Friends of Cortes Island (FOCI) give this to a Cortes Islander who has made a significant contribution to the environmental wellbeing of the community.
“I'm just going to tell you a little bit about Jo Ann Green. So Jo Ann Green was an exemplary environmentalist who came to Cortes in 1969, and she immediately became involved in social environmental activities on the island,” explained Helen Hall, Eecutive Director of FOCI.
“She was a leader in the formation of Friends of Cortes Island, and she was an active homemaker in support of home services on the island too. She represents the spirit of Cortes Island's resilience and it's residents recognition of the vital importance of the natural environment. In recognition of all of that, we developed the Jo Ann Green Award in 2001.”
“So it's been running now for well over 20 years, and I'm delighted to say that this year's winner is Bruce Eliingsen, who has worked tirelessly for the natural environment on the island, particularly through his work in eco Forestry and I would just like to read out his nomination.”
“Bruce Ellingsen consistently and humbly, year after year, commits himself to better forestry practices on Cortes and supports the community in various other ways. Watching him work on the perimeter fence around the natural burial area at Manson's cemetery for close to two months, putting in posts and rails that he purchased. So the cemetery can be a place where trees grow, is just another example of his steady and cheerful dedication. So ,well done to Bruce.”
Bruce Ellingsen: “Thank you very much for that, Helen. That's a great honor for me to be awarded this Jo Ann Green Award. Having known her and interacted with her in her early days on the island.”
“It was probably shortly after she arrived on Cortes, when Raven Lumber came to start their logging on the South Point Road area in 1979, and that certainly engaged all of the Cortes community and the concerns around the rapid change to the island environment with the modern harvesting activities that were going on over that period and into the eighties. We engaged in ongoing discussions about the impact of it, how people felt about it, mostly at Gorge Hall. We put out a survey that we had a very good response to and generated something approaching 80% consensus in the long run, after all of these discussions, that Cortes community wanted to be actively involved in the management of the forest on Cortes as broadly as possible.”
“That's continued, I feel comfortable in saying that support of around 80% of the population for what we're doing with the eco Forestry approach and getting the community forest in the long run in partnership with the Klahoose First Nation has been a very good start to the island community, taking control of management of the forest on the island and that'll be continuing and hopefully be broadened in the coming years.”
Cortes Currents: Do you want to say a couple of words about the natural burial site?
Bruce Ellingsen: “Yes, I will, Well, after Ginny passed in 2019, I naturally was focused much more on the end of life period, which I'm into now, not knowing exactly when I might clock out as sometimes is said, and my days as a human on this beautiful earth of ours.”
“With all the thoughts of my own and conversations with other people, sharing ideas about end of life and what comes and goes in a lifetime I'm very comfortable with my body being endured in the natural burial site as opposed to six feet down in the conventional burial site within the Manson Cemetery.”
