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Newsletter BC Interior Forest Education News Southern Interior Forest Education
Interior Logging Association Forest Education Van After a summer hiatus, the Interior Logging Association's forest education van travelled to the West Kootenay in September to take part in a National Forest Week annual event for Gr. 5 students at the Kootenay Lake Forest Center. The forest education van also spent the day at a Kelowna school, where forest education volunteers from COFI and the Canadian Women in Timber and a forester from Gorman Brothers Lumber presented to Gr. 1, 3 and 5 students on topics such as forest health, tree ID, forest management, forestry past and present and wood products. As always, the van was an effective education tool with its colourful exterior murals and its informative interior displays!!
Okanagan College Career Fair In early November, COFI South Forest Educator, Debbie Bazett, once again organized and hosted a forestry booth at Okanagan College's 2010 Fall Career Fair, assisted by local forest professionals from Tolko Industries and Gorman Brothers Lumber, who shared theirknowledge and expertise about theindustry. Numerous parents and students dropped by the booth and considerable interest was shown inpursuingnatural resource studies. This event is the Interior’s largest career fair, giving students a chance to meet regional, national and international employers and to learn about college and university programs and other available post-secondarycareer and training options
East Kootenay Celebrates National Forest Week Because of the significant value of the range resource in the East Kootenay, Rocky Mountain Forest District and its forest professionals have been celebrating National Forest and Range Week for several years.
Almost three hundred school children toured the Cranbrook Community Forest during National Forest Week. Subjects discussed included trees, plants, grasses, species and where they exist, ecosystems and habitat. Younger students took a short hike around Kettle Pond, which has eight points of interest along its path, while older students took a longer hike and learned about forest and range issues along the way. A work bee was held at the Cranbrook Community Forest to clear one hectare and was attended by 65 people. The Cranbrook Cubs, Scouts and Guides took part in tree pulling and dragging slashed trees to roadside. The debris was ground into chips that were then placed on the trails in the community forest.
West Kootenay NFW Annual Forestry Day Held at Kokanee Park Once again a variety of staff from the Kootenay Lake Forestry Centre, as well as Forest Service retirees and a guest forest educator put on our annual National Forest Week Forestry Day activities. The target audience was Grade 5 students from elementary schools in and around Nelson, as well as from one school from Kaslo. Approximately 250 students attended and were split into four main groups, with each group going through eight different activities during the 4 ½ hour timeframe. The activities were all conducted at beautiful Kokanee Creek Park, located between Nelson and Balfour on the West Arm of Kootenay Lake. This facility is perfect for the kids to have a whole bunch of fun learning about forestry and wildlife. The first station involved the kids visiting the Interior Logging Association van for a fantastic presentation by Darcee O’Hearn, our guest forest educator. She gave a brief overview of logging history and current practices and surprised students with the myriad of forest products on display inside the van that are made from the trees around them. The next visit at this station was a hands-on presentation of wildlife pelts and hides, with a Ministry of Environment Wildlife Biologist explaining how wildlife habitat is a critical factor to include when you are planning to log an area. The kids even get a chance to try some deer jerky... Yumm!! The final visit at this station was with a Caribou specialist to learn about this very important local species of ungulate. The kids then hiked down a short trail to learn about fighting forest fires. The Wildfire Management Branch station was a real crowd pleaser! At the first activity the kids saw all the equipment in an Initial Attack (IA) tanker truck and got to try on the chaps, hard hat and gloves and lift a chainsaw off the ground. The men and women of the IA crew then started a log on fire with a drip torch and fire up the water pump to let a “Grade 5 IA crew” fight the fire. After the “firefighting “was the always fun hand tank pump relay race. This activity had the kids break up into crews that needed to move a couple of golf balls and one beach ball by spraying them with the pump. The kids were warned about possibly getting wet and they were great at encouraging each other to get through the tasks. The next activity at this station had the students looking for bark beetles and larvae under the bark of a green attack lodgepole pine tree. The presenters explained the mechanism the beetles used to burrow into the tree and lay their eggs and illustrated the use of funnel traps with a tossing game using popcorn kernels.
As the kids left to home and they got on the bus, each of them received a tree seedling, provided by the Pacific Regeneration Technologies nursery in Harrop. I feel that this day is an important contribution to the Natural Resources segment of the students' curriculum and what better way to learn than get out there and see it in action!! The teachers report that they reflect on this day all through the year and that it is a positive and fun way for the kids to learn. As for us, it is our contribution to celebrate National Forestry Week. For more information about this event, contact Brian Conrad at: 250-489-2751 (ext. 3380)or e-mail Conrad@cotr.bc.ca
Creston Community Forest Celebrates National Forest Week
Last September, the Creston Community Forest hosted a National Forest Week event for fifty Grade 3 and 4 students from a local Creston elementary school. Students were taken on a field trip to one of the cut blocks in the Community Forest that had been partial cut earlier in the year, where discussion centered on some of the physical and visual changes occurring throughout the seasons in deciduous and coniferous trees. Following the field trip, each student received a copy of the ‘Tree Book’. The Creston Community Forest looks forward to providing future forest education events to Creston Valley students as part of their mandate. For more information about the Creston Community Forest Corporation, email Dan Gratton at: dgratton@crestoncommunityforest.com or call 250-402-0070.
Annual Fall Environmental Studies Camp Held in Thompson Region In October, The Thompson Forest Education Program hosted their 5th Annual "Introduction to Environmental Studies" camp. The camp was held at McQueen Lake Environmental Education Centre, north of Kamloops and was attended by twenty-four Grades 10, 11 and 12 students from Clearwater and Kamloops.
Lessons and activities over the three days were taught by instructors from Thompson Rivers University and Selkirk College as well as personnel from BC Timber Sales, Ministry of Forests & Range and Kamloops Search and Rescue. Students were instructed on the following topics:
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The local daily newspaper, the Townsman issued a four-page Rocky Mountain Forest District supplement, with many interesting articles and pictures highlighting local forest and range issues. One feature was the 'Three Years at a Glance' fact sheet, a valuable guide to district statistics that clearly showed some interesting activity trends on the land base. 
Following the water fun, the kids ran down the path to the Bugs, Bark and Art station where they counted the rings on a small tree cookie from a dead and dry Douglas fir branch, and learned how a tree grows. They then let their creative juices flow with coloured felts on the flip side of the cookie. While they were doing this, they took their best guess as to how many bears of the gummy species were in the small container. The winner from each school got to take the container home and each tree cookie was sprayed with lacquer and dried for each student to take home as a souvenir.
The last station saw the kids go down through the forest to the lakeshore and back on a scavenger hunt for all sorts of forest stand attributes. With the prize for the right answer being a mini candy bar, there were many budding forest professionals in the crowd.
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