It’s strange to think that the field school portion of my Masters is already over. Considering how little I’ve slept these last three weeks, they have gone by incredibly quickly. I’m currently in the Frankfurt airport, waiting for my flight to Helsinki, so I’ll do a quick recap of what happened after we left BC.
A lot.
Ok, I’ll elaborate a little. The Alberta crew was great! They welcomed us with open arms and, after laying the ground rules, it was like they’d been with us from day one. You could tell that they’d put a lot of thought into what they wanted us to get out of this portion of the field school and had picked some really knowledgeable guest speakers from which we could learn. Having the coordinator there to supplement everything we were learning, meant that we were able to get a really good idea of forestry in Alberta!
In Alberta, we learned a lot about how to use forestry to imitate natural disturbance when harvesting. Our coordinator having a fire fighting background meant that we learned a lot about this in relation to fire management and prescribed burning. I found it especially interesting because of the time I spent working in Dawson Creek. For the most part we explored the Peace Region of Alberta (a similar area to Dawson Creek) and it was really neat to relate my experience on the other side of the border to how things were done in a similar ecosystem, but a different province.
To finish the Alberta leg of our adventure with a bang, we decided to stay up all night instead of getting some sleep before our 6am flight! I think Edmonton is still recovering from our adventures and I must admit, I think I am as well. But it was all in good fun and there will always be time to sleep later....right?
In New Brunswick, the welcoming committee took a little time to warm up to us. At this point we’d been with only each other for 14 days and it was starting to show. We had about a million inside jokes and must have looked like a motley crew to any outsiders. I like to think that in the end they realized that though we may party hard and joke around a lot, we are responsible adults who are there because we are curious and actually like learning. At least, I hope the message got across!
As different as BC and Alberta were, New Brunswick was in a world of its own! As it was one of the first areas of Canada to be colonized, they are dealing with a lot of private land in their forest management. Another big difference in how the Maritimes work is that they do a lot more value added products. And by a lot more I mean BC and Alberta do none, as compared to New Brunswick doing almost only value added products! This meant that a lot of this leg of the journey was visiting mills and factories and seeing the diversity of products being made, from low grade fencing to paper to high end kitchen cabinetry. Coming from my conservation background, this was a whole new world. I’d never seen all these wood products being made and the questions from me and the whole group were endless. I think we went over time at every stop we made. Our hosts deserve a thousand thanks for their knowledge and patience with us!
The most interesting thing about this field course was learning just how differently everything is done all over Canada. You wouldn’t think one country would have such diversity in resource management strategies, but when you take into consideration the vastly different social and political climates in these areas...it really makes a lot of sense. What one region of a country adopts without a second thought, wouldn’t even be on the radar in another region. Especially in a country as large and politically young as Canada! I also learned that my UBC education was VERY BC-centric and I’m glad I chose to go to a different university (or two) for my Masters.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Regarding Alberta, two obvious issues raise themselves and I wonder whether your hosts talked about them at all:
ReplyDelete1. Pine beetle
2. Oil sands
I'm not sure whether the second issue is a forestry related subject, but perhaps falls within the purview of conservation and may have been of interest to some of you.
"The most interesting thing about this field course was learning just how differently everything is done all over Canada. You wouldn’t think one country would have such diversity in resource management strategies, but when you take into consideration the vastly different social and political climates in these areas...it really makes a lot of sense."
ReplyDeleteI'd say it's pretty obvious that such diversity should exist. This country is huge. It's practically a continent in itself. So you're going to have all kinds of resources. And it isn't a country of lazy people either. So of course you are going to get people who will do all kinds of things with those resources. What is surprising to me is that BC does NOT do any value added stuff. I would have thought otherwise.
Yup, we talked about mountain pine beetle and the oil sands on the Alberta portion of field school (and a bit on the BC side, too). They are both very related to forestry from an ecological perspective as well as from the point of view of politics and industry.
ReplyDeleteI agree that it is not surprising to have different resource management strategies as they would relate to the resources available. Canada has a great diversity of resources, so it would have management practices to be compatible with that. The thing that surprised me about it was the role that politics and social viewpoints played in vastly changing how those resources were managed. You could have the same resources available in BC and a few km across the Alberta border, but the values change as soon as you cross that arbitrary line. Then you cross the continent and Canada is an older country there, so that history along with politics and social norms (and even simply province size) play into how the resources are used. It's just kind of amazing to think of.