2026 Webinars
#3. Restoring Grasslands in the Rocky Mountain Trench
Date: Thursday, February 5 at 12 pm PT / 1 pm MT.
Presenter: Randy Harris, RPF, Rocky Mountain Trench Ecosystem Restoration Program
Randy Harris is a Registered Professional Forester based in Cranbrook. He has a Diploma in Fish and Wildlife Management from BCIT and a bachelor’s degree in forestry from University of Alberta. For 32 years, Randy worked for BC’s Ministry of Forests and also served 6 years as a Habitat Biologist for BC’s Ministry of Environment. Randy spent the last decade of his government career as the Team Leader of the Ecosystem Restoration (ER) program in the Rocky Mountain Trench Randy is now working as a forestry consultant for local First Nations, The First Nations Emergency Services Society, the Trench Society and Provincial ER program assisting with planning, prescriptions, vegetation monitoring, post burn evaluations and curating an online library on Ecosystem Restoration topics.
Join forester, Randy Harris, as he outlines how grassland and fire resilience science aligns with traditional First Nation land stewardship activities and how learnings from this local initiative are being disseminated province-wide. Randy will discuss this work in the context of the Rocky Mountain Trench Ecosystem Restoration program which was created in 1995 as part of the Kootenay Boundary Higher Level Plan as a partial solution to a thirty-year conflict over a forage/grass shortage in the Trench. Ecosystem Restoration (ER) is the process of directing a damaged ecosystem back to a state of health.
