Wednesday, September 4, 2019 | Your community newspaper since 1916
CITIZEN PHOTO BY BRENT BRAATEN
First day fun Gurpreet Brar plays a game of bolaball Tuesday afternoon at CNC during the orientation toonie barbecue. CNC is celebrating a milestone this week as it welcomes students back for its 50th anniversary. When CNC hosted its first semester in September 1969, it had 253 registered students. As of last week, CNC had 3,076 students for the 2019 fall term across all of its regional campuses, an increase of five per cent from last fall.
Other pests pose problem for B.C. forests Derrick PENNER Vancouver Sun While British Columbia’s timber industry is occupied with the mountain-pine-beetle infestation’s aftermath, forest managers haven’t lost sight of other pest problems looming among the trees in a changing climate. News this summer has been dominated by mill closures and production cuts as companies adjust to timber supplies depleted by the unprecedented infestation that killed off pine trees in up to 18,000 square kilometres of forests. At the same time, the province is closely watching an outbreak of spruce beetles chewing through trees across hundreds of square kilometres of forests to the north and east, Douglas fir beetles are
wreaking havoc in Cariboo forests around Williams Lake and 100 Mile House along with other pests such as the spruce bud worm. “We wouldn’t expect (the spruce beetle infestation) to be at the same scale as the mountain pine beetle,” said entomologist Jeanne Robert. “That said, this is a large outbreak, so we are going to keep monitoring it very carefully.” Robert added that scientists believe the spruce-beetle infestation peaked in 2017 when it spread across 3,420 square kilometres of northern-interior forests. In 2018, the spread was smaller at about 2,420 square kilometres. The estimate for 2019 won’t be complete until November, she said. Aerial surveys are the province’s front-line tool for keeping tabs on all things related to forest health,
said Robert, regional entomologist for the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations in the Omenica and North East region. That includes all bark beetles, such as the mountain pine, spruce, Douglas fir and western balsam beetles – all close relatives – and are all natural disturbances in forest ecosystems, Robert said, so she cautioned that it is difficult to characterize the outbreaks “as all bad.” In smaller-scale outbreaks, bark beetles attack the oldest and sickest trees first, Robert said, which helps open gaps in forest cover to allow for new trees to grow and increase a forest’s diversity of species. “This is actually how ecosystems have evolved into what we see today (in B.C. forests),” Robert said,
“which is very useful for humans.” It is a combination of factors, however, ranging from insects to forest fires that forest managers, First Nations and timber companies need to worry about, said Allan Carroll, director of the forest science program in the University of B.C.’s department of forest and conservation sciences and a professor in insect ecology. “But the one big bow that can be wrapped around all of this is the issue of a warming environment,” Carroll said. The mountain pine beetle, for instance, took hold so well and in areas it had never been before because interior forests rarely experience the deep winter cold snaps that normally kill the insects off, keeping them in check, Carroll said.
Then the large number of dead trees left over from the infestations contributed to a buildup of fuels in forests for successive years of record forest fires. And fire-damaged trees became susceptible to pests such as the western spruce bud worm, which weakened forest stands making them less resistant to more damaging threats, such as the Douglas fir beetle. “Forests and forest ecosystems are so super complex that things that happen at one point in time can have an echo effect for many, many years – decades – to come,” Carroll said. In response, Carroll said scientists are learning that people need to focus on how to re-establish resiliency in forests, which will require considerable patience.
French immersion numbers hit record high Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff The number of French immersion students in School District 57 hit a new record, according to the Canadian Parents for French, B.C. and Yukon. As of the 2018-2019 school year, 1,155 students were registered in the program, an increase of 27 from the previous school year. As well, the proportion of students in French immersion stood at an unprecedented 8.69 per cent of the school district’s total population. Indeed, the growth in the number of French immersion students bucked a trend that had seen an ongoing decline in the total student population before leveling out at 12,915 by 2014-15 and growing marginally each year since then. The ongoing growth has mirrored a province-wide trend over the last 20 years, Canadian Parents for French executive director Glyn Lewis said in an interview.
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He attributed part of the growth to a “historical legacy.” French immersion has been offered in B.C. for 50 years now, he noted, long enough for two or three generations of students to have gone through the program. “And now they want their children to have those same opportunities that they did,” Lewis said. It has also developed a reputation strong enough to draw the attention of other parents looking for a way to “challenge their kids” and develop a benefit that lasts a lifetime. Citing Statstics Canada, CPF said Canadians who speak both French and English earn, on average, 10 per cent more, and have a lower unemployment rate, compared to Canadians who only speak one of the two official languages. “As well, there are cognitive developmental benefits of learning an additional language, such as stronger listening skills,
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improved focus and concentration, increased ability to understand complex problems and higher tolerance, insight and understanding of other cultures,” CPF said in a press release. As of 2018-19, there were 53,995 French immersion students in B.C., an increase of 4,544 since 2013-14, when they represented 9.2 per cent of the total student population. The proportion has more or less leveled off at 9.5 per cent in the past few years. Within School District 57, the recent rebound in student total population combined with the ongoing growth in French immersion has created a juggling act for school board trustees. With the schools nearing their capacities, school board chair Tim Bennett said enrollment at the kindergarten level at Ecole Lac des Bois and College Heights Elementary School has been capped while there is still
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some room left at Heather Park Elementary School. As for the high school program at Duchess Park Secondary School, Bennett said the trustees and staff are continuing to “monitor very closely as capacity is an issue at all of our high schools but in particular at Duchess Park.” Last year, the board began consultations on whether Spruceland Traditional School and Edgewood Elementary School should continue to be feeder schools for Duchess Park or transferred to the catchment area for D.P. Todd Secondary. A decision will be made this fall, Bennett said. Trustees are also continuing to work to draw provincial government funding to expand D.P. Todd by 300 seats by the 2023-24 school year, he said. As of 2018-19, there were 13,291 students in School District 57 and Bennett expects to see modest growth over that when a count is conducted on Sept. 30.
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