Communities Want In On Omineca Beetle Action Coalition

Friday, May 19, 2006 04:01 AM

The communities of McBride, Valemount and Mackenzie should be part of the Omineca Bettle Action Coalition. The three were not included in the set up of the Coalition which has been given $800 thousand dollars by the Province to make plans to carry through during the mountain pine beetle crisis and beyond.

The Regional District of Fraser Fort George has a representative on the Coalition, as does the City of Prince George, but the communities of Mackenzie, McBride and Valemount were not invited to take part. "It isn't that far as the crow flies from Mackenzie to the area served by the Omineca Mountain Pine Beetle Action Committee" says Regional District Director Don Zurowski who added " and beetles don't take the highway, they fly, so I think we should ask the Coalition again to include these communities."

McBride Mayor Michael Frazier says his community isn't interested in the finances "Its not about the money," he told his Regional District colleagues, "Its about being part of the planning for economic diversification."

The Regional District of Fraser Fort George has already received one letter from the interim Chair of the Coalition saying it wasn't possible at this time to include the other communities. Valemount Mayor Jeannette Townsend said "There is nothing to stop Prince George from setting up its own Coalition with the inclusion of these communities." Some Directors think that kind of move just might be enough to raise some eyebrows at the Provincial government level about why the communities weren't allowed into the Omineca group.

The Regional District has promised it will ask again for inclusion. The Beetle Coalitions were initally set up in conjunction with specific forest districts from Smithers to Prince George.

There are similar coalitions in the Cariboo and Chilcotin.regions.

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Posted on Friday, May 19, 2006 04:01 AM in News by 250 News

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Comments

Posted by: YamaDooPolCat on May 19 2006 6:56 AM

If the beetle had the same effect on Vancouver there would be a Coalition on every block. Each city block in Vancouver has the same population as Valmount or McBride..
The further we are from Vancouver, the bigger the mangement area. It's similar to the elected representatives. The area outside the Van-Vic jungle gets 90 percent of the province and 10 percent of the representatives, as if one suburb in Vancouver is different from one in Victoria.

Posted by: owl on May 19 2006 10:25 AM

As I said once before on this site, it is called the Mountain Pork Barrel Epidemic.

As far as I can tell, there is no cohesive network of the various community groups being set up to deal with their particular approach to plan for a "post beetle" economy. In my mind, the Vanderhoof region is different from the Valemount/McBride region, which is different again from the Mackenzie region. There should be a strong network connection so that they can learn from each other about those things which are common. But each should have a local group with their own action plans and budget.

Perhaps Valemount can build some mountains in Vanderhoof so that Vanderhoof can set up its own ski resort as their tourist based action plan.

What all communities have in common is that they are part of the Fraser River Basin Council (except Mackenzie) which has a formal Structure which may be able to handle the networking part. Its mandate is socio-economic-environmental sustainability.

http://www.fraserbasin.bc.ca/regions/ufr.html