Dear Editor,

To clarify the Islands Trust advocacy on the proposed National Marine Conservation Area (NMCA), Parks Canada did agree in 2005 to the Gabriola Local Trust Committee’s request that the southern waters of Gabriola and Mudge be included in the study area. We won on that one in 2005, are happy and grateful for the support, and aren’t doing any further advocacy on that (last week’s article was confusing on that count).

The ocean-based ecosystem mapping done as a result shows the amazing ecological values of Gabriola Pass, Dodd Narrows, False Narrows and the Flattop Islands, and the new Parks Canada “Proposed Southern Strait of Georgia National Marine Conservation Area Reserve Atlas” (in the Gabriola library) shows this.

Parks Canada is floating the idea of starting out with a smaller NMCA area, and is asking for public input on that, but our southern Gabriola waters are already included in the NMCA proposal and that’s thanks to a lot of local letter-writers, Georgia Strait Alliance, and Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society work back in 2005. Thanks!