Deb MacKillop has been participating in and leading field tours at the WADF site since 1999. She also, in her spare time, manages the bike trails and has ridden through these operational trials, watching the trees and plants grow and die, hundreds of times over the past 25 years. In 2020, along with her crew, she established National Forest Inventory (NFI) plots to monitor and assess ecosystem change across the retention gradient. Deb spent many years working as the Regional Research Ecologist for Kootenay Boundary Region. She published three BEC field guides for southeast BC and is nearly complete the final guide. Deb currently works as the provincial Forest Biodiversity Lead at the Office of the Chief Forester in the Ministry of Forests.
