100 Mile House's friendly, social & entertaining online news source!

Additional Job Opportunities Program projects worth a total of $758,513 will employ fifty-one displaced resource workers in making essential improvements to forest and range lands throughout the region.

“These projects get fifty-one local people back to work so they can continue building skills while taking care of important projects that will benefit the health of our forests and rangelands,” says Cariboo-Chilcotin MLA Donna Barnett. “The best social safety net is ensuring that everyone has a job and the means to support their family, and that is just what this program is providing.”

The Job Opportunities Program projects are as follows:

• $20,000 to rebuild the range boundary fence between Tatla Lake Ranch, ½ Way Ranch and Butler Mountain Ranch.

 

• $10,500 to clean up the fence right of way including falling and removing trees for 22 km of fence line at Tatla Lake Ranch.

 

• $68,666 to support Yunesit’in Development Enterprises manually brushing, slashing, pruning and conducting pullback on approximately 100 hectares of lodgepole pine and douglas fir that are encroaching encroaching onto endangered grasslands and rangeland at Alexis Creek.

 

• $86,100 to support C & S Ventures Ltd. surveying and marking of over 3800 hectares of land to respond to catastrophic wildfires and the mountain pine beetle epidemic around Alexis Creek.

 

• $161,005 to support Stswecem’c Xgat’tem Development Ltd. Partnership brushing and removing pine, fir and spruce stems as part of an eradication treatment across 1,633 hectares in Green Lake, Raphael Road/70 Mile House, Island Lake, Augustine Flats/Fox Tail Flats, and Big Bar Mountain.

 

• $217,252 to support Six Mile Ranch constructing and repairing fences on over 13 kilometres of land, which will improve livestock management on the Cahoose and Holtry Range units. Habitat for wetland and riparian-dependent species is also being enhanced, and forage for wildlife and livestock is being improved.

 

• $99,960 to support Alexis Creek Indian Band manually brushing, bucking and clearing 140 km of trail. Work is taking place from Redstone to Puntzi Lake; on the Puntzi Lake trail; on the Red brush trail; on the Bidwell trail; and from the Chezacut to the Chilcotin Lake trail.

 

• $95,030 to support Larson’s Woodchipping and Tree Removal brushing and chipping approximately 27 km of road allowances to prevent urban-rural interface forest fires in the Interlakes area.

 

First announced in May 2008, the Job Opportunities Program is one component of the federally-funded, $129-million Community Development Trust. In July 2009, the provincial government committed an additional $30 million towards the program, which the federal government is matching on a project-by-project basis through the Community Adjustment Fund.

The Province’s contribution to the Job Opportunities Program is part of its commitment to provide stability for workers and communities, maintain the workforce during the economic downturn and help British Columbians gain new skills to be successful in the future.

For more information about the Job Opportunities Program, go to www.cd.gov.bc.ca/cdt/ and for information regarding local announcements visit Donna’s website at www.donnabarnettmla.bc.ca.