Chinese-Language Ancient Forest Tours – Training for Educators Begins in Stanley Park

Today the Ancient Forest Alliance (www.AncientForestAlliance.org), the Hua Foundation (www.HuaFoundation.org) and the Stanley Park Ecology Society (www.StanleyParkEcology.ca) launched a new educational program that will eventually target the half a million Chinese-speakers in the Lower Mainland about the ecology and conservation of BC's old-growth forests.

The organizations held their first “training for educational tour guides”, volunteers who are interested in potentially leading old-growth nature walks in Mandarin or Cantonese, in Stanley Park. The Ancient Forest Alliance's Ken Wu and the Hua Foundation's Kevin Huang guided the dozen volunteers along some of the most spectacular old-growth trails in the park, the Tatlow and Lovers Trails where 14 feet wide, 800 year old redcedars still stand, and explained in English about the plants, animals, ecology, and related conservation issues regarding old-growth forests in British Columbia. The specialized terminology will subsequently be translated by skilled volunteers into Chinese for the participants to study.

As there are half a million people in the Lower Mainland who identify their mother tongue as Chinese, this program aims to help raise the awareness and level of engagement of a major segment of BC's population on the ecology and conservation needs of old-growth forests.

At a future date to be announced, once there is a trained core of nature guides, there will be public tours in Mandarin and Cantonese in the old-growth forests of Stanley Park and potentially in the Walbran Valley, Avatar Grove, Eden Grove, and Echo Lake Ancient forests.

If you can speak Mandarin or Cantonese and would like to participate in this program, please contact Ken Wu at [email protected]