The Burns Lake Community Forest (BLCF) hosted an open house and community barbeque in celebration of their 20 years on July 20.
Burns Lake Comfor planted 1,228,918 trees this fiscal year, bringing the total to 22,278,918. Their main focused area of planting was near Guyishton, Babine and Boer Mountain.
There were poster boards set up showing some projects related to what the Burns Lake Community Forest does.
One of the projects is the Skeena predator project, by Maher, Dr. Karen, and Frank Doyle. The project informed habitat loss is the number one threat to wildlife worldwide, predator species have various requirements and use their habitat differently from one another, clear cut logging is the traditional form of timber extraction [and] more recently other forms of logging are being examined for their possible benefits to wildlife while also allowing timber harvest.
Frank Varga, General Manager of BLCF said, “We were expecting this would be one of our largest events ever in the history of BLCF. We prepped for this to fully celebrate our 20 years which was two years ago… but with covid we had to restrict the number of people who could attend outdoor gatherings to 50.”
This year 470 people to showed up and there were many kids activities such as face painting. Free ice cream was being served by the Burns Lake & District Chamber of Commerce. Randi Amendt, Executive Director said, “The girls said they served close to 200 ice cream cones to attendees. It was great and we appreciate Comfor allowing us to be part of their celebration.”
Ursa Minor Brewing was handing out free samples. Gwyndolyn Nicholas said, “We really enjoyed the open house. The event was a platform for ourselves and other locally businesses to share what we were up to with the community. We were invited to provide samples of and sell merchandise. We were able to pass on brochures about our location and we got a chance to meet new people interested in craft beer. Nathan’s in house rhubarb soda was a hit. Very impressed with their hospitality.”
Another vendor on location was the new food truck in Burns Lake – The Mountpress Juice Cafe. Gurpreet Singh, owner said, “It was a great meeting community members, we gave out over 200 of our cold pressed juices. We appreciate Comfor for including us in their celebration.”
Although in past years there has been large single announcements about specific donations, this year several groups of the community who have received donations were at the event and they showcased how much had been previously donated to them.
Johnny & the Rockers entertained the crowd and there were many raffles for items being won by people who attended the event.
Varga went on to say, “I remember the first open house I went to in 2014, and two people would show up. It was no different until 2016, when I started making it more of a community celebration. So, in six years we have gone from five to 20 to a couple hundred, to over 200 to last years has been really nice to see.”
