ver The Edge Pa

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UNBC students travel to Dunster

By Aaron Mahoney
Although Pete Johnson had
been working hard on pre-
senting his scenario for the
Upper Goat River, the stress
did not really start until on
the bus on March 30. His
power point presentation did
not completely transfer to
Dr. Steve Dewhurstis labtop.
"| thought it was a joke."
said Johnson, "when Dr.
Dewhurst called me to the
front of the bus."

NREM 400 was given a
choice in the beginning of
the semester to either use
the Upper Goat River
Watershed, which is located
200 km east of Prince
George just outside of
McBride, and map out the
effect of different manage-
ment activities or submit to a
standard lecture style class,
the students jumped at the
chance.

The Upper Goat River is
the last untouched water-
shed in area and it present-
ed a tremendous opportuni-
ty to collect all available
information on the area,
analyze the material and
present the findings to a
forestry conference in
Dunster.

Comprised of fourth year
recreation, wildlife, planning
and forestry students the
class was broken up into
four scenarios: Maximum
timber extraction, recreation
and tourism, ecological
management and fish and
wildlife. The assignment was
random so a student major-
ing in forestry could find
themselves in. ecological
management. Based on
these management objec-
tives and constrained by the
Forest Practices Code and
Land and Management
Resource Plan for the area,
the fourth year students had
to try to hit specific goals for
job creation, timber volume
available while determining
the effects of access, silvi-
culture system, fragmenta-
tion, sedimentation, habitat
loss, caribou and grizzly
requirements to name a few.
The final litmus test for a

semester of work was to
present their findings to the
forestry conference. The
conference was made up of
delegates from the Ministry
of Forests, Environment,
Parks, industry, consultants,
Canadian Forest Service,
NGOs, locals and other
interested parties.

Dr. Dewhurst was checking
the power point presenta-
tions on the bus when he
found he could not open
Johnsonis file. A quick
phone call from the Dome
Creek Diner, approximately
one hour from. McBride,
determined that it would be
extremely difficult to transfer

“I thought it was a
joke when Dr.
Dewhurst called me
to the front of the
bus.”

Pete Johnson,
Fourth year Forestry
UNBC

student

the 10 Mb file from UNBC to
Dunster because of the
phone connection.
Johnsonis group frantically
started to piece together
their presentation from
notes, print outs and by
poaching photos from the
other presentations.

The bus arrived in Dunster
at 5:30pm. The presentation
started at 7:00pm.

The presentations went off
without a hitch.

According to delegates, the
students did a good job.
They thought that the pre-
sentations were profession-
al, provides a different per-
pective on the forest indus-
try and what the outcomes
are when the focus of devel-
opment is switched from tim-
ber extraction to other objec-
tives.

"It was a good presenta-
tion," said Jeff Beale, District
Manager for the Ministry of

Forests inf
McBride. When
asked if the ideas
presented would

management
plan, Beale stat-
ed more assess-
ments were to be}
done on the river}
channel but more
road building is
planned for the
area this sum-
mer. ,
"Weather per-
mitting, another
three kilometres
of road should be
completed and
they (McBride
F o rT e-s *
Industries)
should be able
to access the

:aron Wat om

Slocan employee Steve Day and UNBC student Peter Johnson

first three

blocks." said} discuss scenario planning for the Upper Goat Watershed at the
Beale. EFMPP conference held in Dunster. Johnson took part in a
The students} UNBC course which used the untouched Upper Goat

Watershed as a basis for modeling how different management
practices would affect jobs, recreation, biodiversity and objec-
est manage-| tives of the licencee. The scenarios were then presented to the
ment and a new! conference.

interest in the

Upper Goat

Bei y 2 f

have a new per-
spective on for-

Watershed. For
most of the stu-
dents, this was
their final major
project for before
graduating.
"| plan to do

taineering there
this = summer,"
said

Atkinson,
beautiful
and maybe
there are still
other possibili-
ties to just log-
ging”.

Dan Ko, UNBC student with a major in wildlife, answers
questions at a forestry conference at Dunster about a Caribou
travel corridor in the Upper Goat River Watershed.