Newsletter

BC Northern Interior Highlights
Chris Lear (Manager, Forest Education)

New Mountain Pine Beetle teaching resource

During the spring, COFI’s Northern Operations' Forest Education Manager, Chris Lear, has been very busy giving presentations on the Mountain Pine Beetle Epidemic in schools throughout the Peace region in Chetwynd, Dawson Creek, Fort St. John and Nelson. These presentations clearly open the eyes of students and teachers as they learn about the magnitude of the epidemic, its causes and its effect on the environment. They are always amazed that a beetle the size of a grain of rice could cause such damage.

The Mountain Pine Beetle Epidemic, a new teaching resource developed in a partnership with Market Outreach Network and the COFI North office, will be distributed free of charge in May to all elementary schools in BC. Targeted at the intermediate (grade 4-7) level, it includes lesson plans, activity sheets, a new video and CD, posters and take-home materials so that parents too can learn about the MPB epidemic. In all, some 2000 resource kits have been produced. The COFI South office will distribute the kits to all schools in the southern interior.

Two new Natural Resource Management programs took place at the end of May in the Nechako School District involving students from Fort St. James, Vanderhoof and Fraser Lake high schools and the first ever Natural Resource Management program for schools in School District No. 28 – Quesnel at the beginning of June.

For more information contact Chris Lear, Forest Education Manager by phone at: (250) 614-4352 or by email: lear@cofi.org.

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