A disaster recovery workshop will be held this weekend in Williams Lake to help ranchers and farmers manage their way through the recovery phase following last summer’s record wildfires.
President of the Cariboo Cattlemen’s Association, Cordy Cox says the free workshop that is open to all industry producers, will be hosted by David Pratt who is one of the most sought-after speakers and respected authorities on sustainable ranching in North America.
“His programs have benefitted thousands of families and millions of acres. He’s researched management intensive grazing and strategic issues impacting the profitability of ranches,” she says.
“So he’s mostly dedicated to helping people transform their farms and ranches into sustainable businesses, and with this workshop, after a disaster, it’s going to focus on the issues that arose and then it will provide solutions and tools to help them become or stay sustainable. It will also deal with some of the emotional parts of it as well like PTSD because that’s something that people went through.”
Cox says that 35 people have already registered.
To register for the workshop that is being supported by both the provincial and federal government, you can email [email protected] or contact Cox at 250-476-1221.
“There’s a lot of highway fencing that has been done and a lot of the cattle that were displaced have been found and brought back into the home ranches which has been very positive. The final numbers aren’t in, but as far as we know right now there are not the deaths of cattle that we expected originally,” she says believing that people are becoming more positive about the situation.
“Not only that, the Agri-Recovery program for wildfire compensation has been working wonderfully and there’s been a lot of support cheques going out to the producers in need which has been helping bring in hay and do fire clean-up.”
“At this point, There’s a lot more positivity for the year to come being that they’ve received this financial assistance.”