Dear community,

Thank you for another great year of ecological stewardship in the Comox Valley and beyond. This year marks the beginning of some exciting new projects, the continuation of others, and the expansion of our stewardship community. For all of this, we’re grateful for the support of our volunteers, donors, members, and project partners.

In 2024, we continued our work at Kus-kus-sum, recontouring soils, building tidal marsh and riparian habitat, and planting over 5000 native plants. Over the next year, we’re planning to restore the final third of the site and remove the steel piling wall during the Winter of 2025-2026. With some new grant funding (announcements to come!) and your continued donations and volunteer support, we hope to finish the project this coming year.

We also restored 700m2 of eelgrass at Gartley Beach, restored tidal marsh at Dyke Road Park in the K’ómoks Estuary, launched a community water quality initiative, and published two papers on forage fish and microplastics. This work is all made possible through deep collaboration with First Nations partners, regional, provincial, and federal governments, other NGOs, and stewardship groups.

Our board welcomed some new members and said farewell to some old friends. The board has focussed on governance, continued with professional development and adopted new supervisory protocols. This is all in the interest of delivering to the community and our funders the highest level of confidence in our mission as our team, and budgets, grow.

In closing, we’d like to honour and thank the 288 volunteers who contributed 1,674 hours to our projects, and the 192 donors who supported our most successful winter fundraising campaign ever! We raised over $77,837 to support our projects over the coming year. We wouldn’t be where we are without your continued support.

Sincerely,