Happy holidays!

Amidst visits with loved ones this season, I hope you have an opportunity to enjoy the beautiful biodiversity surrounding you. Whether you are caring for native plants on your balcony, enjoying a winter walk around your favourite nature reserve, or volunteering at a local ecological restoration project, engaging with the natural world has countless benefits. Spending time in nature can help enhance your physical and mental health, boost your mood and reduce stress, and foster a sense of connection with the natural world. All wonderful benefits to living a life inspired by conservation!

This year marks TLC’s 25th anniversary of conservation. Today the organization protects 250 conservation covenants covering a combined 12,868 acres, and a further 2,784 acres of habitat where we manage and hold title. Our protected areas expanded this calendar with two new projects: a bequest of 8.1 acres of wetland, Garry oak, and Douglas-fir habitat in the Blenkinsop Valley from the estate of Joan Alston-Stewart, and a conservation covenant covering 16.6 acres of mature forest on Gospel Rock on the Sunshine Coast.

In addition to these TLC-led projects, this year we worked in partnership to protect 15.5 acres of rainforest on Salt Spring Island with the Salt Spring Island Conservancy and 58 acres in Otter Point with the Capital Regional District and the Juan de Fuca Community Land Trust Society. Working with partners at all levels has strengthened our collective abilities to deliver the critical programs necessary to protect, monitor, and restore the ecosystems and habitats in our care. Throughout the province our volunteers, staff, and partners are working to complete studies on species health, restore impacted areas, and provide access. From Nimpo Lake to SISȻENEM (Halibut Island), the Clearwater River Valley to the Highlands, communities have come together to protect and steward our vital conservation areas.

At Abkhazi Garden, in addition to the 3,300 hours our 67 volunteers donated to ensure the site was in exceptional condition for our 22,000 visitors, our team worked with Royal Roads University professor and war historian Geoffrey Bird to create a documentary entitled Abkhazi Garden: Sanctuary from War. This moving tribute to Prince and Princess Abkhazi and the community that has continued to protect their legacy has resonated with so many who have sought comfort within the Garden’s embrace.

In the Clearwater River Valley, TLC’s Deertrails Naturalist Program brought together 11 participants and expert instructors Briony Penn, Lyn Baldwin, Nancy Flood, Maleea Acker, Trevor Goward, and Nancy Turner to share naturalist knowledge while exploring TLC’s 140 acres of wetland, meadow, and forest in the Valley. Bringing together a multi-disciplined, blended approach with poetry, mapping, nature journaling, hiking, species identification, and more, TLC’s Deertrails Naturalist Program has rejuvenated participants and instructors alike while strengthening their connection to place.

Just outside of Trail, the grass and brushlands of TLC’s Fort Shepherd Conservancy Area have been aflutter with restoration projects including pollinator enhancement projects with volunteers from the Kootenay Native Plant Society, Trail Wildlife Association, Sinixt Confederacy, and the Rotary eClub of Waneta Sunshine. During just one of our restoration events, 23 volunteers were able to add more than 1,000 native plants and one million seeds into the lower benches along the Columbia River.

This accumulation of efforts and achievements – and many more throughout the province –
is only made possible through the support of donors like you.

Thank you for your support of TLC’s projects and programs this year. Through COVID, extreme weather events, and economic uncertainty, you have made your concern for our critical ecosystems known with your gifts to TLC.

If you are still planning on making your year-end gift, please visit our website www.conservancy.bc.ca/donate to give. Your gift will help us steward and expand our critical protected areas throughout the province. Donations made online or postmarked December 31 are eligible for 2022 tax receipts.

Wishing you a happy and healthy new year,

Cathy Armstrong
Executive Director