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Faye Smith, Project Coordinator with the Mid Vancouver Island Habitat Enhancement Society (MVIHES), is a champion for stream stewardship and watershed health. She is a catalyst for science-based action along the east coast of Vancouver Island. “Being passionate about fish and streams (which I am) and being passionate about music (which I am) are pretty much the same. You have to learn, practise and keep being involved with both. They take commitment and you need the time to stay engaged and keep learning more,” said Faye Smith. “The rewards come from hard work and the feeling you are making a difference, no matter how small.”

Launched in 2012, the Georgia Basin Inter-Regional Education Initiative (IREI) provides local governments on the east coast of Vancouver Island with a mechanism to share outcomes and cross-pollinate experience with each other as well as with local governments in the Metro Vancouver region. “The IREI program will integrate natural systems and climate change thinking into asset management, as well as demonstrate how local governments can progress along the ‘asset management continuum’ to achieve the goal of sustainable service delivery for watershed systems,” concludes Brian Carruthers.

“For the past 36 years, I have been involved in all aspects of large river to small stream stabilization and rehabilitation/restoration in every state but two,” states Dave Derrick. “Through 150-plus workshops in the last 8 years I have taught over 8,000 individuals the philosophy, methods, and concepts of river design and fluvial geomorphology. Over the course of my career as a research hydraulic engineer with the US Army Corps of Engineers, I have been an educator, facilitator, designer, reviewer, and constructor of almost every type of river and stream stabilization/restoration project imaginable.”