The Barkley Community Forest Corporation is hosting an open house on Wednesday to bring locals up to speed on its operations to date and dish out a cool $1 million surplus accrued in 2017.
The corporation is run in partnership between the District of Ucluelet and the Toquaht First Nation and has a an annual allowable cut of 27,000 cubic metres for the community forest located near Maggie Lake.
“The community forest is an initiative that had been on the go for two decades and finally came to fruition in 2015,” said the corporation’s treasurer Geoff Lyons adding that roughly 80,000 cubic metres has been harvested since 2015.
The open house will be held at the Toquaht Office from 3-7 p.m. and will include a celebration of 2017’s $1 million profit, which will be split with Ucluelet and the Toquaht First Nation each receiving $500,000.
Along with maps showing where harvesting is being done and a rundown of the efforts being made to ensure it’s being done sustainably, the open house will also be an opportunity to locals to provide input into what they think their community’s profit should be spent on, according to Lyons.
He added the corporation is eyeing supplementary uses for the site including possible trail networks.