In his spare time, he helped save a forest

Dec 28

Matthew Syvenky hugs one of the freshly planted bushes in April 2021. Volunteers planted over 30 native plants this day! Photo by April Kornitsky

By Patricia Lane & Matthew Syvenky

These in-their-own-words pieces are told to Patricia Lane and co-edited with input from the interviewee for the purpose of brevity.

Matthew Syvenky helped save a forest.

After this 21-year-old Simon Fraser University student brought his community together to remove invasive species from a part of the Cariboo Heights forest in Burnaby, B.C., and rewild it, the City of Burnaby protected a larger portion of land previously slated for development.

Tell us about your project.

After gaining support from Burnaby’s Cariboo Heights Forest Preservation Society and the necessary permits, I used my networks to bring over a dozen volunteers to a basketball court-sized site to pull over 500 kilograms of invasive Himalayan blackberry that had overgrown everything and plant the area with native grasses, shrubs and bushes.

The mayor, councillors and city staff visited the site and could see people cared enough about the land to take care of it. That meant they felt it appropriate to protect not just that site, but a much larger area from development.

Peter Allan

In his spare time, he helped save a forest

Tell us about your project.

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