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Kenneth Strand was born in Yakima, Washington in 1931. He passed away in Kamloops, BC February 14, 2025
Kenneth grew up in an apple orchard near Yakima and attended local schools. He received his BA in Economcs from Washington State College in 1953. Because of his interest in labour relations he took a job with the contractor building the Hanford atomic project. A project that was plagued with labout disputes. He returned to school as a Woodrow Wilson Fellow and a Ford Foundation Fellow at the University of Wisconsin. After receiving his PhD. he taught at Washington State University and Oberlin College before joining the division of Manpower and Social Affairs at the OECD in Paris.
In 1966 he joined the Department of Economics and Commerce at the newly opened SFU. Because of his experience he chaired the joint faculty meetings that voted non-confidence in the existing President of the University. He was appointed Acting-President of SFU in 1968 and as President in 1969. He served as President of the University until 1974. He returned to teaching until his retirement in 1986.
After retirement he was consulted on various labour related issues. He served as Chairman of the Task Force on Employment and Training for the Ministry of Education and Job Training, Chairman of the Industrial Adjustment Committee for the Construction Labour Relations Association and the Building Trades Council of BC, Manager of the Strategic Planning Project for the Universities Council, Chairman of a Special Commission concerning industrial relations on BC Rail, and was a member of the National Study Team concerning industrial relations policy for mega project construction in Canada.
In 1995, he and his wife Elna moved to Lac le Jeune, near Kamloops, where he pursued his hobby of fly-fishing lakes. He had many fond memories of fishing friends and fish-outs with the Kamloops Flyfishers.
Kenneth passed away after a long battle with infections. He leaves his wife Elna of Kamloops.
Kenneth was not only respected but well loved by his many friends and colleagues. His sage advice and quick good humour will be missed.
No service by request. In memorium please support the Robert C. Brown Award at SFU or the charity of your choice.
A series of services provided by the environment make Earth habitable for humans. Human existence depends directly and indirectly on the services provided by lakes. The services include provisioning, recreational, regulation, and maintenance functions. Although we value some of the direct services provided by lakes due to the economic importance of water, we do not acknowledge other services that affect us indirectly. Humans are rational and tend to appreciate materials with monetary value, but most of the services provided by various lakes are considered gifts from nature; hence, humans place a higher priority on human capital and physical capital than the free services that they get from the environment. Assessing the economic values of lakes is not straightforward due to the non-availability of a specific market for trading the services provided by the biome (Reynard & Lanzanova, 2017). In this chapter, we attempt to assess the value of ecosystem services and Lac Le Jeune as a natural asset (capital).
Through traditional knowledge and use of the Rivers and Lakes within Secwépemcúlucw, my ancestor Antoine Lampreau, contributed to the trade economy within our region. Our waterways were an integral part of life and were used for trade, fishing, gathering and connection to surrounding communities.
— Kaleena Carriere (she/her), Advancement Officer — Indigenization & Williams Lake Campus, Thompson Rivers University
Lac Le Jeune is a lake located within Lac Le Jeune Provincial Park near Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada (“Lac Le Jeune,” 2022). The lake is named after Father Jean Marie Raphael Le Jeune, a well-respected priest of the indigenous population since 1880, who spent most of his life there (Balf, 1978). The Lac Le Jeune Provincial Park, which was established in 1956, is a 213-ha park located 37 km south of Kamloops and 47 km north of Merritt. The lake, with approximately 147 ha surface area, is also called “Batchelor” which means trout and “Chuhwels.” The lake has a 240-ft fishing wharf that caters to physically challenged anglers, and it is famous for producing fighting rainbow trout with an average size of 1.5 kg (BC Parks, n.d.).
Figure 1: Lac Le Jeune (Paul Mannix/Wikimedia Commons) CC BY 2.0
Valuation of Lac Le Jeune
Reynaud and Lanzanova (2017) categorized the cultural services lakes provide into several sub-services, including fishing, boating, camping, sightseeing, and swimming. Lac Le Jeune is a popular recreational lake that provides a series of ecosystem services, including provisioning, regulating, cultural, and supporting, to residents and non-residents of the area. The lake’s most evident service is the cultural services, and it provides all the recreational sub-services highlighted by Reynaud and Lanzanova (2017). Kamloops This Week (2018b) reported that the City of Kamloops awarded a contract worth $899,000 to a local contractor to reconstruct the surface of Lac Le Jeune Road, which leads to the lake. The decision consequently makes the trip much easier for tourists.
The total economic value of the lake can be grouped into use value and non-use value. Lac Le Jeune’s direct use value (mostly in the summer) has to do with the direct satisfaction that residents and tourists derived through its use, such as fishing, irrigating, taking pictures, camping, and breathing fresh air; meanwhile, the indirect use value has to do with the indirect benefits the lake offers to the society (BC Parks, n.d.). For instance, Lac Le Jeune serves as a source of water storage, which automatically helps reduce the risk of downstream flooding. It also serves as a water supply for the vegetation, such as lodgepole pine, marshland, and pinegrass forest surrounding the lake, providing good air and temperature for the tourists. It serves as a habitat for aquatic animals that comprise the food web and hosts terrestrial animals such as moose, bears, and lynxes (British Columbia, n.d.).
In addition to the indirect use value, the lake also helps reduce human activities’ impact on nature by absorbing pollutants. Furthermore, the non-use values of Lac Le Jeune are the benefits that residents and tourists derive from the existence of the lake, which is not recreational nor commercial related, such as nature appreciation, conservation, and cultural significance of the lake. For instance, Lac le Jeune is well known for its fighting rainbow trout, making trout fishery very significant to the province (British Columbia, n.d.).
This study uses the benefit transfer method (BTM) described by Sun Oh et al. (2014) to estimate the value of freshwater lakes. Recent estimates on freshwater lakes were obtained from the Ecosystem Services Valuation Database and compared to the previous studies carried out by Constanza et al. (1997) and Constanza et al. (2014) (Brander et al., 2023).
Benefit Transfer Method
The benefit transfer method (BTM) is the process of applying valuation results, functions, data, or models obtained from the study of a resource (study site) to evaluate the economic values of another resource (policy site). (Sun Oh et al., 2014). This makes it possible to estimate the monetary value of Lac Le Jeune with the value of the lake surface area and the value of various ecosystem services of lakes in Canada, the UK, and the USA (study site).
Ecosystem Services Valuation Database
The Ecosystem Services Valuation Database (ESVD) is an online database that was created to provide robust and accessible information on the economic benefits and biodiversity (Brander et al., 2023). It contains over 8,000 value records from over 1,100 studies from various biomes, ecosystem services, and geographic locations.
Table 1 demonstrates that by multiplying the size of Lac Le Jeune, which is an approximately 147-ha surface area, with the per hectare values of lakes in Canada, the UK, and the US (Angler’s Atlas, n.d.f). The value of ecosystem services provided by lakes in Canada, the UK, and the US is estimated at a conservative value of $23,542/ha/year, which is less than what Brander et al. (2023) estimated at $108,361/ha/year and the $41,251/ha/year conservative estimate for lakes in North America, Europe, and Oceania. There are two reasons our figure for these lakes is less than Brander et al.’s (2023) value. First, our value does not capture many sub-categories services, especially the regulation service, and second, it does not include all consumer surplus from the natural asset. Thus, using the median approach, the total value of economic service provided by the lake can be estimated as $11.6 million, $8.5 million using the average value, and $3.5 million using the modified median that removes low-count ecosystem service.
Table 1: Total Value of Lac Le Jeune Ecosystem Services
Table 1: Total Value of Lac Le Jeune Ecosystem Services
Note. Adapted from Brander et al. (2023). See Table A for a full breakdown
Applying a simple annual interest of 1.5% to the total ecosystem service value (median approach) gives a value of the Lac Le Jeune at $773 million, $567 million (median approach), and $233 million for the conservative approach. However, the value of Lac Le Jeune as a natural asset is a minimum of $3.5 billion and a maximum of $11.6 billion using the lower 0.1% discount rate. Compared to the 2022 value of British Columbia’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which is $284.8 billion, at the maximum estimation, Lac Le Jeune provides benefits equivalent to 4.1% of the province’s GDP (Statistics Canada, 2023).
Table 2 shows a breakdown of the value of Lac Le Jeune as a natural asset.
This chapter has helped to place a monetary value on the ecosystem services provided by Lac Le Jeune. The study uses two different social discount rates (1.5% and 0.1%) to evaluate the value of the lake. The two discount rates place different weights on future generations. The lower discount rate places a higher weight on the future generation and allocates a much higher value to the resource than the 1.5% discount rate. The maximum value of the lake using the lowest discount rate, which portrays the sustainability goals of the indigenous community, is $11.6 billion, almost 5% of the province’s GDP.
It is important to note that the estimates from this study only provide comprehension of Lac Le Jeune’s monetary value; further estimation, such as contingency valuation analysis, travel cost, and hedonic pricing evaluation, may be required for decision-making. This value may provide some insights to policymakers on the lake’s economic value and consequently influence them to enact regulations that protect the lake from development or other activities that may harm its value.
Appendix
Table A: Value of Ecosystem Services of Lakes in Canada, UK, & US
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