The Cottonwood Lake Preservation Society has raised roughly $70,000 so far. The group want to purchase additional lands around the park outside of Nelson which are slated for logging. The society’s Treasurer Bruce Morrison explains where the impressive amount came from.
“$53,000-$54,000 was from Go Fund Me and the rest was from direct donations and $15,000, I believe, was from events.”
He explains what the money will be going towards.
“That will allow us to hire grant writers and get some professional guidance and assistance. But really, we need much more funding in order to make anything happen and that’s the message we want everyone to be aware of.”
They’ve spent only $5,000 so far.
Tara Clapp has been contracted to do some grant writing. In that process she started thinking about who could become the future land holder. One of the ideas is a conservation organization, but she says there’s a number of different values to take into consideration.
“Once you transfer land to a conservation organization, they’ll do their best to work with existing recreational users, but no more trail building and all that kind of stuff and these are the biodiversity values that they manage for.”
She says money would also be needed to reforest the area that’s already been logged.