Five years ago, Wells Gray Community Forest Corporation (WGCF) was awarded a provisional forest licence and began to lay the foundation for managing the community forest landbase.
During its first five years the corporation has harvested 167,000 cubic meters of wood, creating significant local employment and opportunities for local business during a very difficult economic period for the forestry sector. Thus far, WGCF has been involved in many challenging and interesting projects. We have completed salvaging beetle-killed pine, conducted a thorough Watershed Risk Analysis for District of Clearwater’s drinking water supply, supported Non Timber Forest Product studies and completed a detailed re-inventory of the community forest area. In addition, to date the forest community has provided local groups and organization funding to an amount of $215,000
Our accomplishments are well recognized and resulted in the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations awarding a 25-year renewable forest license on July 2, 2011.
This decision enables the corporation now to undertake long term planning exercise to set new goals and directions.
Wells Gray Community Forest is now planning for the next five-year operational period, for which we require a new Management Plan and a Forest Stewardship Plan. In order to receive public input the CF will hold a public meeting to provide an opportunity for the general public to review our draft Management Plan and the draft Forest Stewardship Plan. The meeting will be organized in conjunction with the Community Forest Advisory Committee. Representatives from the Wells Gray Community Forest Corporation and CFAC will be present to discuss the documents and associated maps.
Wells Gray Community Forest Society, which disperses the CF grants, will also be present at the meeting. They will be discussing application procedures for our Fall 2012 Granting cycle. They will field any questions and provide suggestions to assist with the application procedure for funding.
The meeting will be held at the Community Resource Center (224 Candle Creek Rd.) on Thursday, July 19, 2 – 4 p.m. and 7 – 9 p.m.
Please contact general manager George Brcko for further details at 250-674-3530 or wgcommunityforest@crcnt.ca.
