Bulkley Valley Research Centre

10/13/2026

Kira Hoffman's seminar presentation on the Fire Stewardship Program and implementing prescribed and cultural fire with a variety of partners and across knowledge systems can be watched on the BVRC YouTube channel. Enjoy!

Dr. Hoffman introduces the Fire Stewardship Program and shares prac...

10/08/2026

Screening throughout BC in the coming weeks--"The Fire in Our Hearts"--a documentary about the indigenous and settler communities of Southside and their response in the face of massive wildfires.

09/28/2026

Can't wait to jump into fall fun? SERNbc is starting their webinar series. Find out more on their website. First one is Tuesday Sept 29, featuring Zachary Holden, US Forest Service Research Ecologist, introducing Regenmapper.

Join us during your lunch break (12:30-1:30 p.m. PT) over the "desk season" and deepen your understanding of leading practices in ecological restoration.Some webinars are recorded - you can view past webinars on our Youtube playlist here.

09/23/2026

September can be all about new starts, which is certainly the case for Sergio Effio. He has joined the Centre as our new Executive Director!

Sergio has over 15 years of international operational and community leadership experience. For the past six years, Smithers has been home–a place he has chosen to put down roots and become a member of the community.

Sergio’s background spans nonprofit and community service, academic administration, and multi-site operations management. He has worked alongside health authorities, employment agencies, and local employers to connect community members facing significant barriers with meaningful employment.

He is fluent in Spanish and English, and brings a track record of building trust-based partnerships across diverse stakeholders in northern community contexts. Sergio sees leading BVRC as one of the most meaningful opportunities of his career — a chance to contribute to science that will shape how northwest BC manages its natural resources for decades to come.

Please give a warm welcome to Sergio next time you are by the office.

09/22/2026

09/17/2026

The Forest Stand Dynamics program has a new paper out in the Canadian Journal of Forest Research--"Stand development over 30 years after partial-cut harvesting in a northern interior temperate rainforest: capturing stand and individual tree dynamics through empirical studies and modelling"

Written by Erica Lilles, Alana Clason and Dave Coates, the paper addresses barriers to implementing uneven-aged silvicultural systems due to uncertainty regarding stand responses to partial-cutting and a lack of tools for modelling complex prescriptions. To overcome these barriers, we use one of B.C.’s long-term silvicultural systems experiments (located in northern interior cedar-hemlock rainforests) to investigate stand development for 30 years post-harvest and simultaneously evaluate the ability of the model SORTIE-ND to capture this development.

https://cdnsciencepub.com/doi/epdf/10.1139/cjfr-2025-0349

08/27/2026

The Bulkley Morice Wildfire Resilience Project is looking for contractors for a white paper, barriers survey, and a full time Research Associate. Details on the EOIs can be found on our website.

The BuMo Wildfire Resilience Project has been underway since 2024, exploring how practices can be revised to improve wildfire resilience within the Bulkley and Morice planning areas.

https://bvcentre.ca/eoi-bumo2026/

08/17/2026

https://www.wingsofsurvival.com/
A 30,000 km race highlighting one of the world's key migratory routes. Timm and Leanna will be travelling through Smithers in late August, early September. Follow their trip via their blog and map.

A world-first Race with Nature Wings of Survival features Dr Timm Döbert, tropical ecologist and scientific explorer, and Leanna Carriere, Extreme athlete and mum, as they embark on a ground-breaking quest for life on Earth Support our Impact The Expedition At the heart of this extreme challenge on...

07/06/2026

The SIP and BVRC have had a fantastic three years with Caroline Bastable as our Executive Director. It is time to say farewell and good luck as she moves home to the UK. 💚

We will miss Caroline very much for how she brightens any room she enters, her deep knowledge of the challenges and opportunities in the non-profit sector, the funny poses she strikes for photos, and the sincere positive impact she has had at the Centre and in the SIP.

Thank you Caroline for everything you have done! We wish you the best on your new adventures, and hope to see you soon!

Lots of love, the SIP Team.

06/08/2026

Our final seminar of the 25/26 season is this week.

Join us on June 10th at The Old Church (or via Zoom) to hear from Andrew Fall and Don Morgan about wildfire modeling, specifically the TEF (Time-Based Empirical Fire Model) which has been developed to support the Bulkley-Morice Wildfire Resilience Project’s goal of enhancing ecosystem and community wildfire resilience. The TEF model synthesizes the interactions among fuels, weather, topography, and human fire practices to explore how different management strategies influence wildfire behaviour.

After the seminar, stay for the open house to chat with the BuMo Team. Full info on our website, including the Zoom link.

About the Seminar and Open House: This presentation introduces the Bulkley–Morice Time-Based Empirical Fire Model (BuMo TEF), which has been developed to support the Bulkley-Morice Wildfire Resilience Project’s goal of enhancing ecosystem and community wildfire resilience. The TEF model synthesi...