Did you know that the Revelstoke Community Forest Corporation (RCFC) is turning 20 next year?
What a great decision back in 1992 by the citizens of Revelstoke to purchase their own Tree Farm Licence. Over our 20 years we have recorded retained earnings in the $3.3Million range. We have just ended our 2012 fiscal year and I’m please to say we have also managed a small profit. This has been no small challenge for us in this market. It proves the staff and contractors we have are experts in their fields and very dedicated to the success of the corporation. On behalf of the Board of Directors I wish to thank everyone that makes RCFC the best example of community forestry. Once our financial results are audited we will be publishing them in the local paper.
Currently, we are in the middle of our busy silviculture season. Planting is almost done, with 200,000 trees in the ground and 50,000 more to go.
We are conducting site preparation by mechanical screefing and mounding on some winter logged sites. This is a treatment we have not tried before on the TFL. Our contract silviculture specialist has experience with great success in these situations; the goal is to increase the plantability for seedling and reduce the impact from brush. We will monitor these sites to evaluate the effectiveness but we are confident this will help regenerate some of the more difficult sites.
Speaking of brush, that’s the next phase our silviculture workforce will move into. This is a labour intensive activity as the competing brush is removed around the seedling with hand tools or power-tools.
We are lucky in Revelstoke to have two very competent silviculture contractors, Fireweed Mountain Silviculture and Sundance Forest Management, Renaud Paradis and Patti Frazier respective owners.
Mike Carnegie, owner of Ten Peaks Holdings is currently out climbing through cutblocks checking the progress of our plantations.
Another project RCFC is partaking in is the Revelstoke Caribou Rearing in the Wild Project. The goal of the project is to increase the mountain caribou calf survival rate by capturing pregnant females and protecting them through the calving period. The mother and calf are then released once the calf is three to four weeks old. There has been great success in other areas using this penning concept. For more information please contact Kevin Bollefer or Cory Legebokow at the Ministry of Environment.
On the technical side of things we have Tennille Barber, owner of Revelstoke Computer Wiz, building a new website for RCFC. It should be launched sometime in July so please check it out at www.rcfc.bc.ca.
As well, we have a Facebook site with pictures and comments about what we are up to. If you look, I bet you will recognize a few faces.
I would like to congratulate Florina Beglinger, the recipient of the RCFC Scholarship. Florina plans to attend the Forest Resources Management program at UBC Vancouver this fall. It is fantastic to see the up and coming forest professionals – like most forest industry jobs from silviculture, logging, trucking and management, we are facing a work shortage. The forest industry is a very rewarding career and as a team of forest industry professionals we are responsible for British Columbia’s greatest asset, our public forests.
RCFC is a community owned corporation. Please feel free to drop into our offices anytime if you have questions or would like to get a better understanding of who we are.