Wilderness Stewardship and Training Foundation
The Wilderness Stewardship and Training Foundation strives to take resource management to a broader level to include research and local knowledge to influence management decisions on all resources. The goal is to train public and staff to become stewards of the wilderness resources and contribute to:
- Current Stewardship and Resource Management Projects
- Past Stewardship and Resource Management Projects
- Past Referrals and Assessments of Development Projects
The foundation’s founder and director, Kevan Bracewell, has over three decades of hands-on experience in managing wilderness stewardship projects, wilderness steward training, and addressing past referrals and assessments, having sought a balance between resource use and preservation in the Cariboo Chilcotin region for over 30 years.
Mission Statement
The purposes of the society are:
- to develop environmental research and training programs in the fields of resource management and environmental stewardship
- to distribute literature based on research findings in the fields described above; and
- to promote sustainable living practices and responsible resource management among businesses and households.
Wilderness Steward Training
The Wilderness Stewardship and Training Foundation’s wilderness stewardship training programs provide onsite training for its members as well as the staff, guests, and students at Chilcotin Holidays.
Guests, staff, and students at Chilcotin Holidays get involved directly in our Wildlife Research Projects by working with foundation members and other avenues to advance our stewardship training such as the foundation’s administration, regulations, policy, and procedures.
Guests
While on trips to Chilcotin Holidays, guests are encouraged to participate in our research projects directly through data collection in the wilderness.
Staff
Staff learn how to lead by example and are trained to show guests and students various components of wilderness stewardship.
Students
Students are learning to be guides and to be leaders
Sustainable Living Practices
Guests, staff, and students of Chilcotin Holidays are involved in sustainable living practices during their life in the wilderness – be it at the main ranch lodge, at any of the multiple base-camps, in a spike-camp environment, or on daily research outings.
During these situations, staff learn to lead by example and the guests and students learn by participating – hands-on.
Some onsite sustainable living practices at Chilcotin Holidays Wilderness Lodge include:
- Gravity-fed water for domestic and irrigation
- Some houses heated by wood that is dead / dying and salvaged from woodlot
- 2,000 trees are planted on average annually
- Reduce/Reuse/Recycle practiced
- Some camps use solar lighting – all use wood heat
- Greenhouse and garden onsite
- Horse-power, people-foot-powered vacations
- Some buildings constructed from natural resources from the area, i.e. log and stone