Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents - On Monday, May 15, Rami Rothkop and Oliver Scholfield unveiled their ‘Business Roadmap for Value-Added Forestry Products’ on Cortes Island at Mansons Hall. 

Most of what they presented has been discussed before, the difference being that they were not just talking about ‘ideas.’ These were things they had already accomplished. That is why the Cortes Community Forest Cooperative hired them. 

They previously met with local mill owners Ron Wolda, Henry Verschuur, Aaron and Jeremie Elingsen, as well as Kevin Peacey from the Klahoose First Nation.

“We took the information that we gathered, and tried to create several different options for the community to look at, to analyze, and to then choose which direction they want to take forward,” explained Rothkop. 

“I'd just like to say thank you to the people I’ve met, and the new friends that I've connected with here. This is really an enjoyable  project and  I'm pretty optimistic about it. The prerequisite is having people moving forward with ideas, because without that it won't happen, but the ingredients are here for this to work.”

“My approach has always been precautionary with business, and with forestry in general. One of the roadmap options that we came up with, embraced what a couple of the local mills are already doing. We created a vision that would utilize a short-term plan of their expertise and would test the waters for a couple of years with the intention of starting a facility later on Cortes. That would be centralized, assuming these first few years were positive and showed promise.”