Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - Janeen Sutherland has been the Wilderness Tourism Association’s (WTA) Executive Director for close to three months.

She became the WTA’s Executive Director at the end of May and is about to embark upon a new strategic plan for them that will focus on areas of advocacy, marketing support and really building community.

Sutherland did not know how many tourism businesses there are in the Discovery Islands, but last year Breanne Quesnel (President of the WTA and co-owner of Quadra Island based Spirit of the West Adventures) said there are more than 60 whose combined revenues are between $40 and $50 million a year. They are on Quadra, Cortes and the Outer Discovery Islands, but are not all members of the WTA

“We have about 55 members total as part of our organization and most of them are actually coastal and Vancouver Island, A lot of them are. We're picking up more interior members and that's actually one of our goals of our strategic plan. We love to have more partners up north and more partners in the interior and also two more indigenous partners as well,” explained Sutherland.

“Our vision is to create a sustainable future for BC's wilderness tourism industry.”

How is that going?

“We're obviously coming out of COVID and recovering from that. I would say most of our members are really quite thrilled with this summer and how bookings have been and how business has picked back up. Things are going quite well in that regard.”

She added, “We really feel that tourism is the way of the future.”

Sutherland quoted some stats:

“Tourism brings in $20.3 billion per year and 130,000 jobs. That is more GDP than any other industry in British Columbia.”

“There's 149,900 tourism jobs and there are 1,291 BC fish factory jobs.”

“There are 19,748 BC owned tourism businesses and only half of one BC based fish factory is owned by British Columbia.”

“All the rest are foreign owned, and so why are we allowing that in our waters?”

Sutherland said the two issues that kept her membership up at night are protecting wild salmon and new regulations for the forestry industry

“Those are definitely two hot topics, At the WTA we recognize that both of those industries are very important employment for many folks, so it is a sensitive topic.”

“We are all about protecting the wild salmon and the Discovery Islands is the most important migratory route in the world for wild salmon. We know salmon are a keystone species. Without salmon, we won't have forests. They are just such a key part of all ecosystems. We really feel strongly that things are moving right now, the announcement that was made by the honorable Joyce Murray in the spring, are very positive steps in the right direction. We support responsible land-based aquaculture and we really hope that our government can make a shift in that direction.”

They would also like to see some of the forestry regulations changed, so that the industry did not have such a negative impact on tourism.

“Some of the wordings to some of the regulations really are not effective in protecting fragile ecosystems. Why do we need to log some of these pristine areas where some of our operators are going to pull up their kayaks? Why do they need to log that little patch right there by the water?”

Sutherland said the WTA will continue to advocate for change.

“We're really tuned into protecting these wild places and keeping them wild,” she explained.

“We have a pretty bright future ahead of us. Canada now, in the international marketplace: I'd say we are the hottest wilderness destination out there. So I think we've got some really important work to do in the years to come.”