College Diploma - Recreation, Fish and Wildlife (Optional Co-Op)

The College Diploma - Recreation, Fish and Wildlife (Optional Co-Op) at Selkirk College’s Castlegar campus is a 2 year college diploma training field technicians for wildlife, fisheries and outdoor recreation management.

Students learn wildlife and fish biology, habitat assessment, field sampling, GPS/GIS, and outdoor recreation management — taught hands-on in the mountains, rivers and forests surrounding the campus, with an optional co-op adding paid field experience. Few programs anywhere put students this deep into their subject matter.

Selkirk College, founded in 1966 as British Columbia’s first regional community college, is a fully public institution in the province’s West Kootenay region. The 65-hectare forested Castlegar campus offers genuinely small classes, on-campus student housing, and some of the lowest combined tuition-and-living costs of any BC public college. University courses transfer to UBC, SFU, UVic and other BC universities through the province’s formal transfer system, and graduates working in the region can pursue the BC Provincial Nominee Program toward permanent residence.

This program is registered in the field of CIP 03.0601 (Wildlife and fisheries science and management) and is offered to international students under Canada’s post-November-2024 PGWP field-of-study rules; two-year programs support a Post-Graduation Work Permit of up to three years. Selkirk College maintains a live list of PGWP-eligible programs and seat availability changes by intake — verify this program on the official list and with IRCC before applying (final decisions rest with IRCC).