The 2020 Impact Report was created to update the Evans Lake community on the impacts of our programs, how we are faring during COVID-19, and what we are planning for the future. To read the full 2020 report, please click on “View Full Impact Report.” Or to see the bigger picture on one page, please click on the “View Executive Summary” button below. In our 60th year, we’re sharing what we’ve achieved together. Building on our first 60 years of success, Evans Lake continues to innovate with our forest education experience, efforts to make our programs accessible and inclusive to an even-wider community, and communicating that experience back to families at home. In the past several years, +80% of Evans Lake summer campers are “more interested in spending time in and learning about the outdoors/forests,” and feel that they “know more about forests and the outdoors” as a result of their experience.

Christine Spice

NIC’s Centre for Applied Research, Technology and Innovation (CARTI) is working with M.C. Wright & Associates Ltd. and BC Timber Sales (BCTS) to plant kelp at various log storage and handling marine sites on Vancouver Island.  The three-year project is funded by an Applied Research and Development grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) in addition to contributions from the project’s partners.  The goal of the project is to use planted kelp to support the marine habitat in areas where woody debris from log storage and handling has built up on the ocean floor.  “Forestry is the largest resource sector on Vancouver Island and one of the sector’s major challenges is containing and mitigating the negative impacts of logging on coastal habitat,” says Allison Byrne, NIC lead researcher.

Sonia Furstenau

For her last question in week two of the legislative session, BC Green Leader Sonia Furstenau focussed on forestry management, asking when the government would make good on its promise to protect B.C.’s most vulnerable old growth forests.  “This government still has not taken any meaningful action to protect these forests,” Furstenau said to the forests minister in Question Period. “Instead, we’re losing critical old-growth stands, as the old strategy of talk and log continues.”  …Pretty much all forests being cut in the Northern Interior are original forests—not previously logged—and some of it is classified old growth, said Bill Kordyban, president and owner of Carrier Lumber in an interview last fall.  Industry hasn’t been logging and replanting long enough in the interior for second growth seedlings to be large enough to be used for lumber, Kordyban said. “You need a certain size of tree for those products.” 

The largest tree in Canada is known as the Cheewhat cedar. More than 55 metres in height and six metres in diameter, it is estimated to be about 2,000 years old. Premier John Horgan and his son, Nate, made the pilgrimage to visit the giant Western red cedar in 2016, and he says the trek through an ancient forest on Vancouver Island’s west coast impressed him with the importance of preserving old growth from logging.  …Mr. Horgan said he’s grateful that surrounding forest is protected from logging. “To go and visit these places, and to recognize and be humbled by that majesty, is something that I and [Nate] will never forget.”  The year after that trip, Mr. Horgan became Premier. Now his government is struggling to find a way to move forward with the reforms Mr. Horgan has been talking up for years. He has promised a fundamental change, but again, he did not choose the most direct path.