St Margaret's Cemetery Bank Restoration

The weekend of Oct 26-28, 31 volunteers from Saturna, Mayne, Pender, Salt Spring, Gabriola, Lasqueti, Comox, Ladysmith, Sechelt, Vancouver and Victoria will join with 9 Thetis Islanders at The Portal to learn about shoreline restoration from master bioengineer, Dave Polster of Polster Environmental Services.

On Sunday, the group will be giving Thetis a huge gift by restoring the collapsing bank at St Margaret's Cemetery. This is a joint project with SeaChange Marine Conservation Society, the Thetis Island Nature Conservancy and St Margaret's Cemetery Society under the umbrella of the Salish Sea Nearshore Habitat Recovery Project.

Thetis Islanders have generously opened their homes to billet the off-island volunteers. Meals will be held at Heneage House. Donations of baking are welcome to help keep the volunteers well fed and happily working for the community. Contact Vicki Walker (250-246-9126) or Ann Eriksson (250-246-8176) for drop-off (and a big thank you!). 

On Friday, October 26, Dave Polster will be giving a public talk titled 'Restoration for Resilience.' Dave has 25 years of experience restoring shorelines and other natural areas using bioengineering techniques. Here's what Dave has to say about the topic: "Natural processes have been restoring natural disturbances and building resilient ecosystems for millions of years.  By understanding how these recovery processes operate, restoration programs modeled on these natural processes can be used to build resilient ecosystems on sites humans have disturbed.  The restoration programs that employ these methods are very cost-effective compared to traditional treatments." The talk will focus on methods that can be used to restore drastically disturbed sites using examples from Dave’s experience.

Thetis Island residents are invited to attend the talk which will take place at Heneage House Friday October 26that 7:30 p.m. Don't miss this rare opportunity.

Hope to see you there.