A meeting held last week concerning the management of the Englishman River had community members voicing their concerns and suggestions to help preserve the watershed and surrounding ecosystems.
The meeting was hosted by the Mid Vancouver Island Habitat Enhancement Society (MVIHES), led by contract biologist Patrick Walshe, and facilitator and fisheries biologist Warren Warttig.
Residents voiced concerns like water quality, lack of conservation, inadequate buffer zones, logging by private forest companies, replanting problems, and erosion due to clear-cutting, among others.
Toward the end of the meeting, solutions were recorded, many of them suggesting ways to compensate the forestry companies who own the private land, in order to conserve the areas.
Walshe recorded suggestions like carbon trading, where companies would be financially compensated for leaving large tracks of forests.
Corporate taxes could be returned to the watershed for research monitoring and restoration, or other revenue-generating mechanisms that would allow for conservation.
Value added processing was another suggestion, where the forest companies would get a higher price for their timber. This could be done by selling locally for example, so they wouldn’t have to pay for high transport costs. This could potentially create more local jobs, if government could provide incentives for companies to start up local businesses, like mobile home manufacturing, Walshe said.
Faye Smith, project co-ordinator with MVIHES, said the meeting was a good chance for the community to have their say.
The next step will be for MVIHES to take the suggestions to the Englishman River Watershed Recovery Plan Steering Committee, made up of government officials, forestry companies and non-governmental organizations, she said.
“We feel we have talked to the people and we are ready now,” she said. “So it will be happening no question but when I’m not sure.”
Walshe said the group will also be making meetings with senior government officials to discuss some of the suggestions.