Students and volunteers are doing their part to help rebuild forestation at Rose Valley Regional Park.
On Saturday, April 11, around 40 volunteers from the Mountain Bikers of Central Okanagan and Young BC Greens from Okanagan College were at the park planting new trees to replace the ones lost from the 2023 McDougall Creek wildfire.
“With the volunteers here today, it’s just another connection of getting the community connected to the park again and getting connected to nature as well,” said Wayne Darlington, the manager of parks capital planning and asset management for the Regional District of Central Okanagan (RDCO). “It’s almost like a little bit of healing I guess you could call it that, for people getting reconnected to the land.”
Volunteers planted around 300 trees on Saturday. The previous day, around 40 students from Rose Valley Elementary School planted 200 trees.
“It was awesome to see the kids out here,” Darlington added. “They all had smiles on their faces and they were all really happy to help out… they all work together really well and they just loved being out here.”
Darlington added the students will be going back out periodically over the coming weeks to water their trees themselves.
On top of the 500 trees planted throughout Friday and Saturday, Darlington said upwards of around 20,000 trees, plants, and scrubs are being planted throughout the park. In that number is 9,000 ponderosa pine trees.
“We do have a contractor that’s been working all this past week that’s doing the big bulk of the area that was burnt and had to be salvaged and so they’ve been out planting trees, but it’s not just trees though, they’re also planting shrubs and grasses and what we call whips or live staking around the wetter areas,” said Darlington. “They’re planting redwitch or dogwood, there are cottonwoods that are going to help stabilize the areas around the wetlands and provide more habitat so a lot of the species.”
He added replanting new forestry is important to the local Indigenous community as well.
Included in the new trees being planted are seedlings from around 14 years ago that were saved and in the provincial seed source database. The seedlings were saved to due a concerns about the mountain pine beetle around the area at that time.
“We were worried we were going to lose a lot of our pine trees in our parks, so we took the initiative to go and do a seed collection of all the ponderosa pines,” Darlington explained. “We could actually in the future propagate those seeds and create little seedlings and replant in our parks.”
“It turns out after the [2023] fire, we were able to use that seed source that that sits in a provincial seed source database and were able to propagate that seed and use those trees within our park.”
Because the seedlings already come from the area, they’re already adapted to the parks, Darlington added. These seedlings are being used in four Central Okanagan parks that were damaged by the fires.
While its well documented, Darlington explained that the fire did “significant damage.”
In late December 2024, some trails at the park reopened, but many still haven’t. Darlington explained that the 2023 fire was at the worst part of the park when it comes to the trails for residents to enjoy.
He added he understands the frustration from the public who are waiting for all the trails to open, but it’s a process.
“We’re slowly working on it,” Darlington said. “We have a portion of the park that’s open for trails right now as it is and we’re going to continue to keep working on those trails and working with our groups to be able to work back further in the park and hopefully as the year progresses, we’ll get more and more of the park.”
Public safety is the RDCO’s number one priority, said Darlington, who added the recovery work started right after the fires ended.
“We had to start at the very beginning after the fire and we had to make sure that safety of the public was number one, that’s always been our main focus,” said Darlington. “At the same time, we’re also trying to balance the conservation benefits of the park as well so we have passive recreation and the conservation values. We’re trying to try to balance both those. We’re making the park safe for the for the community.”
Rose Valley Regional Park is on provincial Crown land, meaning the RDCO needs a license of occupation to be able to operate as a park. Because of this, the RDCO has responsibilities under the Forest and Range Practices Act.
“We have to make sure that we’re following those processes and all the back effort happening behind the scenes is what most people don’t usually see,” added Darlington. “There’s a ton of that work that has to go on, leading us towards where we are today and getting some trees back in the ground again.”
Now, Darlington is thankful for the volunteers and excited to open all the trails when they are able.
“It’s just really great to see the community come out and kind of help us with this and help with seeing the park as it recovers,” said Darlington, who added there’s still a lot of work to go.
“There’s more to come and we have a lot more work to do yet,” he said. “The park is going to take years and so we just appreciate that people are being patient. I know they want to get back in and they want to see more of the park, and we’re working towards that.”
Funding for the initiative came from Tree Canada’s National Greening Program, the RDCO and community fundraising led by Sovereign Cycle.
Tree planting and restoration work will continue as part of RDCO’s long-term recovery efforts in Rose Valley Regional Park. To learn more visit Wildfire Recovery in Regional Parks.