Friends of Cortes Island is delighted to announce that the winner of the Jo Ann Green Environmental Award 2024 is Gina Trzesicka.
The award recognizes Cortes Islanders who have made significant contributions to the environmental well-being of the community.
Congratulations to Gina for all her fantastic work and dedication to caring for Cortes’ natural environment. Here is her nomination in full:
For many years, Gina has worked tirelessly organizing the annual Cortes Island Christmas Bird Count (CBC). Working with the local birders, she selects a day and ensures each area of the island is covered by observers. Following the event, she collects and organizes all the data, keeping a Cortes Island CBC database and also enters it into the Audubon CBC database.
In addition, each May, Gina tabulates the results of the Cortes Island Spring Birding Event and enters the data into the Spring Birding database. Gina ensures that these databases are up-to-date and available online. She is a valuable asset to Cortes, ensuring the information of these citizen science opportunities is not lost.
Gina is also a key FOCI volunteer coordinating and undertaking monthly lake monitoring throughout the year, something she has done for over six years. Not only does this involve canoeing out to take water quality readings every month of the year, but also managing all the data collected. I hope you consider Gina as this year’s nomination – she is thoroughly deserving of the award.
