Mark and Kate's Day in the Trees at Drayton Valley

Drayton Valley is no doubt a working town and a big part of this work revolves around the forest industry. Could be something to do with the fact that Drayton Valley was only settled in 1957 and much of its forest remains in tact under government holding or Forest Management Areas. Weyerhauser has a large saw mill in town and Sustainable Resource Development (govt. forestry agency) also has an office in town so this coupled with being hosted by a consulting forester makes for some good vocational opportunities for Kate and I. Our day started off with a meeting with a couple of government foresters at the Sustainable Resource Development office in town. Vince and Dave gave us a great insight into how Alberta's forests are managed and detailed the system the government uses to approve, mentor, monitor and regulate forest management. Basically the government sets the regulations, approves operational plans prepared by the companies and monitors harvesting and re-establishment operations. Interestingly the government doesn't have very large fines for non-compliance instead has a method of naming and shaming companies who don't comply with legislation. Apparently this is quite effective. Consultation is a big issue here as there are many forest users including hunters, 4wd/ ATV users, oil and gas companies and aboriginal traditional land use.

Our next visit was to the Weyerhauser mill where we met a couple of foresters employed by the mill. We had the afternoon with Bill and Jeff who gave us a good insight into the planning process they follow and how they go about demonstrating to government that they are managing the provences forests appropriately. A trip to the bushes to see some recent harvesting and site preparation operations was very nice and Kate even figured out what a beaver dam looks like!












Harvested Spruce and Aspen forest 3 years after harvest, site prep and planting.


We also saw some mechanical log segregation at a log yard and I got to check out some prefrabricated steel bridge spans which are used on some of the temporary roads. When we got back to town Col allowed us to see some pretty neat forestry machinery at a contractors yard some of which I had never seen before. Amazing what equipment can be justified when you have a large resource base so close to processing facilities.



One of the larger harvest and haul contractors around has most of their machinery in the yard due to shutdown of harvest. Skidders, delimbers, feller bunchers, and processors can be seen. Awesome!

Self loading log truck capable of carrying 45 tonnes payload!