There's no shortage of spots around the city to get up close and personal with the great outdoors, but there's also nothing to link them.
Representatives from more than 20 clubs, organizations, agencies, businesses and other enthusiasts have teamed up with the city to find someone to lead them in building a nature interpretation and outdoor learning network.
The city is searching for a consultant to prepare a master plan offering strategies and guidelines for showcasing the city's natural offerings.
Community forest manager Dan Adamson said the idea stemmed from the program's public advisory committee wanting to bring together like-minded groups to develop something as a community.
"There wasn't any one single place like a nature centre where clubs and organizations could meet, could co-ordinate, could develop programs, could get funding in place to hire interpreters," Adamson said.
But with sites as varied as the Hudson Bay Slough, Cottonwood Island and Forests for the World, attempting to bring everything under one roof didn't seem like the best course of action.
"The group never really got a place where one site really stood out as the natural site where it would provide all of the things that people are looking for," said Adamson, citing pros and cons like a site having a unique environment but less accessibility or being too urban to be a proper representation for the whole city.
"I think the group wanted to explore the idea of using what we've got and, over the long term, building a network that almost feels like a single site," Adamson explained. "It's got a common visual identity, it's got people working collaboratively so that you're developing programs in a co-ordinated fashion."
In order to do that, a high-level master plan is necessary, which is what the bid proposal, which closes Monday, is looking for.
"It could be quite workable for Prince George," Adamson added. "It could be quite a positive way of going forward, but it just creates its own challenges."
Among those challenges are creating a single visual identity, breaking the project down into manageable pieces to raise money, and using the network to address the lack of youth engagement in nature.
The city is allocating $40,000 to the development of this plan with an October deadline. A public consultation is required as part of the plan's development process.
