The Professor and Forest Renewal BC Chair in Conservation at UBC’s Faculty of Forestry is offering to help make a made-in-Cowichan plan for the North Cowichan forest reserve.
Peter Arcese was in the Valley back in early March to attend the public event, along with 700 local residents at the Cowichan Performing Arts Centre to hear about the municipal forest and has penned a letter to Mayor Al Siebring.
He’s inviting the Municipality to engage with the Coastal Douglas Fir Partnership and the UBC Faculty of Forestry to work together to identify “made in Cowichan” approaches when it comes to the use of our forest resources to generate revenue, but also to enhance amenity, fisheries, wildlife, and recreational values to residents and visitors.
Arcese says the UBC Faculty has engaged in similar activities around BC and the world and the biographies of their members show experience in all of those areas as well as in mill-revitalization and the potential to “off-set” the opportunity costs of traditional forest harvest systems.
He’s asking the Municipality if they would be interested in forming a working partnership with UBC, and the Coastal Douglas Fir Conservation organization to explore how the community might develop forest management plans to sustain economic growth and enhance our well-being.
