About 30 students from Burnaby-based , all clad in hiking boots and high-vis vests, listen intently to the
Squamish鈥檚 Justin Perry stands nearby. He is an instructor with BCIT鈥檚 Forest and Natural Areas Management program.
On this day, 麻豆社国产is their classroom.
These 28 students are about to graduate from the two-year diploma program that focuses on forestry, vegetation management and arboriculture to support sustainable community development.
Tobe, and SRWS president Francesca (Chessy) Knight, are showing the students the, undertaken by the society in the early 2000s.
The main goal of the project was 鈥媡o reconnect the Mamquam River with the Mamquam Blind Channel, and the lower portion of the 麻豆社国产River Estuary.
The project was a great success.
"[It] has really invigorated this whole system. We're having a pink salmon year. They come up every odd year in Squamish. Every two years they return to spawn. So this fall, we're expecting to see a tonne of fish in here," said Tobe, who is executive director and project manager of the society.
麻豆社国产isn't the only stop for the students. They were in the Sea to Sky Corridor all week.
"BCIT is big on bringing the classroom to the field, so this is why we're visiting the Sea to Sky Corridor this week," said Perry, adding they visited as far north as Mount Currie.
"We've visited with the 麻豆社国产Community Forest organization. We visited with L铆l虛wat Forestry Ventures, with some of the local forestry companies, such as Chartwell," said Perry. "We're really trying to show these students here who are about to graduate some of the opportunities [and] some of the ways that forestry in general is changing."
Diversity of students
Julia Allards-Tomalin, BCIT program head in Forest and Natural Areas Management, notes that forestry attracts a diverse group of students. The program is usually half women and half men, she said.
"About a 50/50, split in terms of students," she said.
"There are definitely different fields, like ecological restoration, I feel is a women-heavy industry... But things like urban forestry, traditional forestry, is still male-dominated, [though it] is gradually shifting, which is really nice to see.鈥�
She said there are increasingly more women in management roles, including the ones they met on the Sea to Sky tour.
Allards-Tomalin is BCIT鈥檚 first female head of this program.
"Right now, in our department, we're fairly close to 50/50, in terms of female-to-male instructors, which is nice. It's changed a lot over time. When I was a student, we didn't have a single female instructor," she said.
What is next?
There is a wide range of careers these students could follow upon graduation, both Perry and Allards-Tomalin stress.
"You could end up working in an estuary, you could end up working designing mountain bike trails or all kinds of things," said Allards-Tomalin.
Student Tanya Steinauer, who was previously in the film industry, was inspired by the 2021 heat dome and B.C. wildfires.
"I was like, oh, there's a lot of stuff going down these days on the landscape and in the environment," she said.
"It's very hands-on," she said of what she likes about the BCIT program. "Lots of field trips, lots of being out on the land. So that was very important to me because I like to learn when you're in the situation. Actually, by doing things practically, rather than just classroom-based learning."
She said the week in the Sea to Sky meant she could 鈥渢alk to some really fantastic females in the industry."
After graduation, she will be going back to BCIT for a bachelor's degree in ecological restoration.
Over the summer, though, she will be working with the Ministry of Forests as a research technician in Nelson.
Student Jonathan Jakes, who worked in an office environment previously, was attracted to the program because he prefers to work outside and wanted a career that could transfer him around the province.
"[To] do something that seems really relevant to where I live and in the province鈥攖hings that are related to forests, any sort of natural area management," he said.
After graduation next month he will be working for consulting company Strategic Natural Resource Management out of Port McNeill.
He likes that within the industry, there's planning for quite a far future.
"There's not a lot of places where you can think ahead, like 80 years from now," he said, before heading back to his classmates as they walked further down the Mamquam River with Tobe and Knight.
For more about the forestry programs BCIT offers, go to the school's.
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