TRU and the Kamloops Naturalist Club are launching an environmental program for students next month.

The two groups have been equipped with a grant worth nearly $230,000 dollars to get the program going. The grant was one of only 10 awarded across Canada, out of nearly 150 applicants.

The naturalist club’s program manager Jesse Ritcey says the grant money will be spent over three years on local projects.

“Things like organizing lectures, doing field work, going on trips. As well as the investment in human capital, because these 35 students who will receive this leadership training and environmental education will hopefully go on to be real leaders in the community moving forward. So we’re hoping it’s a lasting improvement.”

The Dean of Science at TRU Tom Dickinson says the projects will mostly be to do with restoration.

“Areas within the city that have been used for a variety of different purposes can be brought back with the right kind of knowledge, and practice, into productive natural ecosystems that will support all sorts of wildlife as well as the natural flora of the area.”

TRU and the naturalist club will accept 35 students for the program which will begin on March 16.

“What we want to do is we want to give them the skills and the foundations to be able to do that. And then to put the knowledge into practice in a project that they can be very much proud of in the end,” Dickinson says.