A new team of student park rangers will be hacking back blackberries, fixing trailhead signs and acting as ambassadors in eight of B.C’s provincial parks this summer, including Mount Seymour Provincial Park in North Vancouver.
Environment Minister George Heyman announced the new BC Parks Student Ranger Program in Mount Seymour Provincial Park Tuesday morning.
“One of the first best jobs I ever had as a young person was as an auxiliary staffer for BC Parks, right here on Mount Seymour,” said Heyman, recalling how coming to work in the “quiet of nature” helped him understand “what the city I lived in had been carved out of and what surrounded us.”
This summer, 48 new student park rangers will have a similar experience, through a program being funded jointly by the provincial and federal governments.
B.C. will provide $610,000 annually for two years for the program, while Ottawa will contribute $260,000.
Students will work out of eight parks around B.C. – including Mount Seymour in North Vancouver, Alice Lake near Squamish, Goldstream Provincial Park in Victoria, Manning Park in the Interior as well as parks in Prince George, Smithers, Kamloops and Black Creek.
Student rangers will work on tasks ranging from facility upgrades and repairs, trail and campsite enhancements, ecological monitoring and interpretative programs for the public. Heyman said the ministry has set a target of hiring 30 per cent Indigenous youth into the program, which is open to full-time students between 18 and 30 years old.
According to the ministry website, pay for the summer work program ranges from $1,200 to $1,500 biweekly.
Heyman said the student rangers will be building their skills and their own connection to nature while they spruce up the parks. “It’s my hope many of them will see a future work in the parks system or working in the environmental field somewhere,” he said.
North Vancouver MP Jonathan Wilkinson said it’s clear Canadians value their parks, noting the number of visits to national parks in 2017 reached historic levels. “Canada’s natural spaces are part of what defines us as Canadians,” he said.
B.C.’s contribution to the student ranger program is being funded by revenue from the province’s parks licence plate program. Introduced in January 2017, the program allows drivers to buy specialty licence plates with one of three iconic images from B.C. Parks for an annual fee. That program has been “successful beyond belief” said Heyman, and has generated about $2.1 million so far through the purchase of about 86,000 parks plates.
Money from the program is reinvested into parks through the Parks Enhancement Fund.
“We will spend every one of these dollars to enhance B.C. Parks. This is the first announcement but there will be more,” said Heyman.
