Forestry alumni Gerry Burch and Kahlil Baker are 2 of just 8 UBC alumni to receive an Alumni Achievement Award for 2018. These awards honour inspiring members of the UBC community whose extraordinary endeavours and leadership have created positive social change.
Gerry Burch will receive the Volunteer Leadership Award for his decades of service to the Faculty of Forestry. Although he received a BASc in 1948, as Dean John Innes says, “he has never truly left. He has been an invaluable alumnus for over 70 years and continues to support the Faculty of Forestry.”
Gerry helped found the Faculty’s Alumni Fundraising Committee and served as its Vice-Chair. He was also Co-Chair of the Growing for the Future Faculty of Forestry Campaign that built the Forest Sciences Centre.
Gerry played a vital role in the creation of the BC Forest Products Ltd Forest Genetics Scholarship for graduate students in the late 1960s, and has personally established 2 undergraduate scholarships for Forestry students: the Gerry and Jean Burch Bursary and the Gerry Burch Scholarship in Forest Sciences. He has also shared his wealth of knowledge and expertise through talks for the UBC Forest Club and the Burgess-Lane Memorial Lecture.
Gerry’s career has been marked with excellence, and he has received many honours in recognition of his achievements. He even has a forest named after him on the south slope of Cowichan Lake on Vancouver Island. He has been, and continues to be, a leader in all topics related to British Columbia’s forests, our province’s most treasured resource.
Kahlil Baker will receive the Young Alumni Award for his innovative reforestation project that links 2 critical global issues: poverty and the environment.
Kahlil received an MSc in Forestry in 2012, followed by a PhD in 2017. In 2007 he founded Taking Root, a nonprofit organization designed to connect smallholders in northwest Nicaragua with the global market for carbon offsets. Through Taking Root, the sale of carbon credits and sustainable wood products serve as financial mechanisms to support widespread reforestation while providing much-needed income to smallholders.
Before Taking Root, smallholders routinely cut down trees on their land to sell wood or grow food for their families, leading to deforestation. With this program, smallholders can feed their families through the income generated by carbon credits, while reforesting their land with native species.
The program currently has 409 smallholders enrolled, and employs 25 full-time and over 1,000 seasonal workers. To date, Taking Root has made over $1 million in community payments,with revenues earned from carbon offset credits and sales of sustainable wood products.
So far, a land area equivalent to over 2,000 soccer fields has been reforested. Kahlil’s design for multi-species tree planting allows for fast growth, shade corridors, and variable harvesting periods. It also reduces soil erosion.
The Faculty of Forestry congratulates Gerry and Kahlil on these well-deserved awards, and is grateful for their contributions to UBC and the greater community.