In the summer of 2019, four water utility providers in the Okanagan were awarded close to $680,000 in grants from the Forest Enhancement Society of BC (FESBC). The grants supported a collaborative approach to wildfire risk reduction in four major Okanagan watersheds that border one another and are managed by the District of Lake Country, Black Mountain Irrigation District, Glenmore Ellison Improvement District, and the Regional District of North Okanagan. “The FESBC funding program has been instrumental in addressing wildfire risk mitigation on Crown land in B.C. at a meaningful scale,” said John Davies, RPF, Frontline Operations Group. “We have gained in leaps and bounds with this important endeavour in the Okanagan Valley through FESBC support.”

Erin Robinson

The city of Quesnel has been nominated for BC Cleantech Award.  They’re nominated for the Community Impact Award, alongside three companies and the city of Campbell River.  A Facebook post from the city notes they were nominated for their Forestry Initiatives Program.   The Cleantech awards are presented by the non-profit Foresight.  “Foresight is a not-for-profit corporation that fosters the growth of small and medium enterprises that are developing technology that improve environmental results and reduce green house gas emissions,” their website reads.

Severely endangered Central Selkirk mountain caribou are taking refuge in the proposed Selkirk Mountain Caribou Park this winter, while BC Timber Sales advertises plans that would push clear cuts into the park proposal and within 220 metres of known aninmal locations said the Valhalla Wilderness Society in a recent media release.  Craig Pettitt, a director and field person for the Valhalla Wilderness Society, said BC Timber Sales is helping to push these caribou off the face of the planet, adding the proposed Selkirk Mountain Caribou Park was designed to protect the caribou.  …The federal government urged immediate new habitat protection, but almost three years later BC has not protected any, while BCTS cutblocks creep closer and closer to caribou located by government radiocollars.

Conservation North has released a map showing the cumulative impact industrial activity has had on the province’s forests.  It depicts roughly three-quarters of the province covered in a swath of red while an accompanying map shows how little old growth is left. It is the product of a project dubbed Seeing Red.  Conservation North outreach coordinator Jenn Matthews said in a statement the group “wanted to show what has actually happened in those forests that most of us can’t see.”  The maps were issued at a time when, according to the group, forests that have never been disturbed by industry are threatened by both industrial logging and a burgeoning bioenergy industry.  The group contends the forests that still stand should remain untouched in the name of curtailing climate change and subscribe to the claim that they do a better job of sequestering carbon than planted forest and offer great benefits in terms of biodiversity in addition

Michelle Connolly

Many people imagine British Columbia as a province carpeted in forests, with giant old-growth trees, but a new interactive map reveals that little remains of B.C.’s original and ancient forests, showing logging and other industrial human activity as a vast sea of red. The “Seeing Red” map, released Tuesday by the Prince George-based group Conservation North, took one year, 10 provincial and federal government datasets and $4,200 to pull together. “The cumulative impacts of industrial forestry have never really been put on display for analysis or review,” Conservation North director Michelle Connolly told The Narwhal. “And it became clear that if we wanted the truth, we would basically have to figure it out for ourselves.” …Pacific Wild creative director Geoff Campbell said the high-resolution map, which allows people to zoom in anywhere in the province to view unlogged forests, will “shock the heck out of your average B.C. resident.”