It’s been quite a year for sixmountains.ca.

The number of unique visitors to the website currently approaches 65,000 — up almost 25,000 from last year.

Word is getting out: If you want investigative news on the Cowichan Valley, then sixmountains.ca is the place to find it.

Here are just a few of the highlights from 2024:

— 'Halalt First Nation sues North Cowichan, Mosaic over logging practices’ … This class-action lawsuit went unreported for months until sixmountains.ca found the documents in BC Supreme Court. The Tyee reprinted the article on-line several days later.

— ‘BC to demolish century-old wooden rail trestle in Cowichan Valley’… This was the most read sixmountains.ca article of the year. The article exposed important history being lost without the public even knowing. Expect a follow story based on freedom-of-information (FOI) documents in the coming weeks.

— ‘Report confirming feasibility of carbon credits in forest reserve kept from public’ … The municipality kept from the public an important consulting report confirming the feasibility of carbon credits in lieu of logging in the Municipal Forest Reserve. The report — stamped “private and confidential” — was released only after an FOI request from sixmountains.ca.

— ‘North Cowichan releases close to 1,000 pages of correspondence after freedom-of-information request’… Only a small fraction of council correspondence is revealed to the public. sixmountains.ca successfully sought greater openness, arguing correspondence has the potential to influence council actions. Look for more such releases of correspondence in the coming year.

— ‘Two fines issued in Cowichan Valley among highest from BC’s 2022 municipal election’ … A review of Elections BC files revealed that two of the five highest fines in the province for 2022 municipal election violations occurred in the Cowichan Valley — David Scott Piercy ($1,000) and Cowichan Works ($750).

— ‘Province receives violation reports of 55 elk deaths in Cowichan Valley over two years’ … Cowichan Valley residents love their elk — as evidenced by the pubic reaction to the death of Bob the elk in a traffic accident in Youbou last February. sixmountains.ca went beyond isolated reports and obtained the big picture on elk deaths in the valley after another FOI request.

In other news, an article first published by sixmountains.ca and reprinted by The Tyee in 2023 received national recognition in 2024. When Forests Fall to Grow Wine Grapes (https://thetyee.ca/News/2023/08/09/When-Forests-Fall-For-Wine-Grapes/) earned a silver award for current affairs reporting in a national writing competition on agriculture. The article documented logging of a private coastal Douglas-fir forest to create a vineyard in North Cowichan.

In 2024, The Globe and Mail also published my opinion piece — ‘Reckless use of social media threatens wild species and landscapes’ — which cited a small park in North Cowichan as an example of what can happen when a sensitive landscape becomes too popular.

Hakai Magazine and The Tyee published my long-form article on the environmental impact of log booms, based on the interaction between harbour seals and salmon and water levels in the Cowichan River estuary. There is a growing push to have the booms located in deeper water.

Reporting by sixmountains.ca also continued to catch the eye of other news outlets on Vancouver Island. CHEK and Global both accompanied sixmountains.ca to the Cowichan Valley Trail near Glenora to document the pending demolition of Holt Creek trestle.

In 2025, sixmountains.ca will continue to pursue important stories that would otherwise go untold. Also, look to sixmountains.ca to lead the way on coverage of a critical byelection in April to replace North Cowichan councillor Debra Toporowski, who is now MLA for Cowichan Valley.

sixmountains.ca can’t do this alone. Your moral and financial support is critical to strong independent reporting. Know that I receive no salary and that all donations help to offset the cost of operations.

That’s it for now.

sixmountains.ca wishes you and yours all the best for the holiday season — and the year ahead.

Larry Pynn

(Photo: Mount Whymper, headwaters of the Chemainus River)