Protect Eagle Bluffs Forest

08/22/2026

🌲🌲🌲The Friends of Eagle Bluffs Forest Society is sponsoring a community garage sale to raise operational funds for our important mission to protect and preserve our endangered Whiffin Spit forest. It's happening Saturday, August 29 on Austins Place--a quiet road where we can enjoy "shopping for a cause." We're asking for donations of items for the sale--a great opportunity to clear the clutter. Just about anything except clothing. Housewares, garden, decor, tools, accessories, camping, children’s toys, books, potted plants and small furniture items.
And if anyone would like to help at the sale, let us know.
Please share this post so we get as many donations and attendees as possible.
Thanking you in advance for your anticipated participation to save our beautiful Eagle Bluffs Forest. See you soon!
Contact: [email protected]
https://protecteaglebluffsforest.ca

🌲🌲🌲The Friends of Eagle Bluffs Forest Society is sponsoring a community garage sale to raise operational funds for our important mission to protect and preserve our endangered Whiffin Spit forest. It's happening Saturday, August 29 on Austins Place--a quiet road where we can enjoy "shopping for a cause."
We're asking for donations of items for the sale--a great opportunity to clear the clutter. Just about anything except clothing. Furniture, housewares, garden, decor, tools, accessories, camping, children’s toys, books, potted plants and cut flowers. We're accepting donations starting August 10.
And if anyone would like to help at the sale, let us know.
Please share this post so we get as many donations and attendees as possible.
Thanking you in advance for your anticipated participation to save our beautiful Eagle Bluffs Forest. See you soon!
Contact: [email protected]
https://protecteaglebluffsforest.ca

08/22/2026

͏2͏0͏
·

🌲🌲🌲The Friends of Eagle Bluffs Forest Society is sponsoring a community garage sale to raise operational funds for our important mission to protect and preserve our endangered Whiffin Spit forest. It's happening Saturday, August 29 on Austins Place--a quiet road where we can enjoy "shopping for a cause." We're asking for donations of items for the sale--a great opportunity to clear the clutter. Just about anything except clothing. Housewares, garden, decor, tools, accessories, camping, children’s toys, books, potted plants and small furniture items.
And if anyone would like to help at the sale, let us know.
Please share this post so we get as many donations and attendees as possible.
Thanking you in advance for your anticipated participation to save our beautiful Eagle Bluffs Forest. See you soon!
Contact: [email protected]
https://protecteaglebluffsforest.ca

🌲🌲🌲The Friends of Eagle Bluffs Forest Society is sponsoring a community garage sale to raise operational funds for our important mission to protect and preserve our endangered Whiffin Spit forest. It's happening Saturday, August 29 on Austins Place--a quiet road where we can enjoy "shopping for a cause."
We're asking for donations of items for the sale--a great opportunity to clear the clutter. Just about anything except clothing. Furniture, housewares, garden, decor, tools, accessories, camping, children’s toys, books, potted plants and cut flowers. We're accepting donations starting August 10.
And if anyone would like to help at the sale, let us know.
Please share this post so we get as many donations and attendees as possible.
Thanking you in advance for your anticipated participation to save our beautiful Eagle Bluffs Forest. See you soon!
Contact: [email protected]
https://protecteaglebluffsforest.ca

08/15/2026

🌲🌲🌲The Friends of Eagle Bluffs Forest Society is sponsoring a community garage sale to raise operational funds for our important mission to protect and preserve our endangered Whiffin Spit forest. It's happening Saturday, August 29 on Austins Place--a quiet road where we can enjoy "shopping for a cause." We're asking for donations of items for the sale--a great opportunity to clear the clutter. Just about anything except clothing. Housewares, garden, decor, tools, accessories, camping, children’s toys, books, potted plants and small furniture items. We're accepting donations starting August 10.
And if anyone would like to help at the sale, let us know.
Please share this post so we get as many donations and attendees as possible.
Thanking you in advance for your anticipated participation to save our beautiful Eagle Bluffs Forest. See you soon!
Contact: [email protected]
https://protecteaglebluffsforest.ca

🌲🌲🌲The Friends of Eagle Bluffs Forest Society is sponsoring a community garage sale to raise operational funds for our important mission to protect and preserve our endangered Whiffin Spit forest. It's happening Saturday, August 29 on Austins Place--a quiet road where we can enjoy "shopping for a cause."
We're asking for donations of items for the sale--a great opportunity to clear the clutter. Just about anything except clothing. Furniture, housewares, garden, decor, tools, accessories, camping, children’s toys, books, potted plants and cut flowers. We're accepting donations starting August 10.
And if anyone would like to help at the sale, let us know.
Please share this post so we get as many donations and attendees as possible.
Thanking you in advance for your anticipated participation to save our beautiful Eagle Bluffs Forest. See you soon!
Contact: [email protected]
https://protecteaglebluffsforest.ca

08/12/2026

Guest Column from Forest Voices, a newsletter published by the Friends of Eagle Bluffs Forest. If you would like to receive this newsletter on a regular basis, please become a member by emailing us at [email protected]

🌲🌲🌲A Healthy Forest
BY ANDY MACKINNON

Well-known forest ecologist Andy MacKinnon has supported our group since the beginning. He walked through the forest with us twice, with permission of the owners, to explain the indicators he looks for in a forest for the purposes of conservation. He considered this forest a gem worthy of protection.

There has been a lot of excellent discussion on social media about the health of the Eagle Bluffs Forest. Thanks to everyone who contributed. The answer to this question very much depends on your definition of what constitutes a
“healthy forest”!

Some forestry texts still define a “healthy forest” as a forest where the activities of insects and “disease” (primarily fungi) are minimized. This is a timber-focused definition, where insects and disease reduce the volume of sound
timber that a forest stand can produce.

I prefer a definition that recognizes that these insects and fungi are essential components of our coastal forests. One such definition is that a “healthy forest” contains healthy amounts of insects and disease. A forest without these insects and fungi would be less species-rich, certainly. But insects and fungi are also why
mature and old-growth coastal forests are structurally diverse. These small organisms weaken or kill big trees, which become big logs, and which provide space for the next generation of trees. A classic west coast old-growth forest is a
mix of big trees and small trees, live trees and dead trees, and logs of various sizes and stages of decay. This provides habitat for a number of species that require such stands – vertebrate and invertebrate animals, plants, fungi and lichens.
One example that should be familiar to most Sooke residents is Black Bears. Black

Bears find their winter dens at the base of big old trees, or in well-rotted big logs. These features are absent from most managed forests on southern
Vancouver Island, and shouldn’t be anticipated with current management practices. As a result, land managers are experimenting with solutions such as laying culverts out in our local woods so that Black Bears will have a place to
den in the winter.

Eagle Bluffs Forest is not pristine old-growth forest, given previous cutting. But it has many of the elements that we associate with such forests - big trees and small trees, live trees and dead trees, and logs of various sizes and stages
of decay. Black Bears den here.

As several commentators have mentioned, because Eagle Bluffs Forest has trees with root rot and heart rot, if and when public access is anticipated, a danger tree assessment along trails will be required. This is important. But, also, because Eagle Bluffs Forest has trees with root rot and heart rot, it provides an opportunity to protect it as a developing old-growth forest in the Sooke region, and to protect all of the species, structures and processes that call such a forest home.

Andy MacKinnon is a forest ecologist who lives in Metchosin, BC. He is co-author of six best-selling books about plants of western North America, and co-author of the Royal BC Museum Handbook “Mushrooms of British Columbia.” Andy is also a conservationist: he’s the Board Chair of Habitat Acquisition Trust (southern Vancouver Island’s regional land trust), and has been involved in the creation of protected areas on Vancouver Island, and along BC’s coast in Haida Gwaii and the Great Bear Rainforest. He is President of the South Vancouver Island Mycological Society (SVIMS).

08/08/2026

🌲🌲🌲The Friends of Eagle Bluffs Forest Society is sponsoring a community garage sale to raise operational funds for our important mission to protect and preserve our endangered Whiffin Spit forest. It's happening Saturday, August 29 on Austins Place--a quiet road where we can enjoy "shopping for a cause."
We're asking for donations of items for the sale--a great opportunity to clear the clutter. Just about anything except clothing. Furniture, housewares, garden, decor, tools, accessories, camping, children’s toys, books, potted plants and cut flowers. We're accepting donations starting August 10.
And if anyone would like to help at the sale, let us know.
Please share this post so we get as many donations and attendees as possible.
Thanking you in advance for your anticipated participation to save our beautiful Eagle Bluffs Forest. See you soon!
Contact: [email protected]
https://protecteaglebluffsforest.ca

08/08/2026

Japanese immunologist Dr. Qing Li has spent decades researching shinrin-yoku, or forest bathing. As a clinical professor at Nippon Medical School, he demonstrated through controlled studies that walking in forests significantly boosts natural killer (NK) cell activity and numbers—key immune cells that fight viruses and cancer.

Japanese immunologist Dr. Qing Li has spent decades researching shinrin-yoku, or forest bathing. As a clinical professor at Nippon Medical School, he demonstrated through controlled studies that walking in forests significantly boosts natural killer (NK) cell activity and numbers—key immune cells that fight viruses and cancer.

In experiments, spending just a few days among trees raised NK cells and anti-cancer proteins by about 50%, with effects persisting for up to a month, unlike walks in urban settings. Trees release phytoncides, airborne compounds absorbed through breathing and skin that enhance immunity. Forest time also lowers cortisol, blood pressure, and stress while activating parasympathetic nervous system responses that support recovery and healing.

Images are generated by AI and for demonstration purposes only.

Source: Li, Q. (2009). Effect of Phytoncide from Trees on Human Natural Killer Cell Function. International Journal of Immunopathology and Pharmacology, 22(2), 951-959; Li, Q., et al. (2007). Forest bathing enhances human natural killer activity and expression of anti-cancer proteins. International Journal of Immunopathology and Pharmacology, 20(2S), 3-8.

08/07/2026

🌲🌲🌲If you haven't yet signed our petition to protect Eagle Bluffs Forest, our team will be outside Village Foods on Saturday, August 8, starting at 10 a.m. gathering signatures. Please stop by, learn more about our campaign to protect this valuable piece of beautiful temperate rainforest in the Whiffin Spit neighbourhood of Sooke, and if you agree, sign our petition. Thank you!

08/04/2026

“We have to elevate urban forests from something that is nice to have to something that we require — mandatory,” said Manuel Esperon-Rodriguez, an ecologist at Bangor University in the United Kingdom and lead author of an essay piece published this in the journal PLOS Climate. “In the same way that we treat education, security, transportation, it has to be elevated to that level.” For more on the essay’s findings about the importance of urban forests, and a link to an article about it, see the shared post.