The New School

Guide Outfitter Module at Forestry Field School Teaches Students to Think More‘Broad’and less‘Board’

Sustainable forest management requires keeping the “forest” in forestry. This is the main objective of The University of Northern BC’s forestry field camp (NREM 333). Each autumn, in the two weeks before the Labour Day weekend, approximately two dozen natural resource students head out to the Aleza Lake and John Prince Research Forests in northern BC to learn to see the forest as so much more than a timber repository.

The camp is modular in format with 1-3 modules a day being taught to teams of 4-5 field camp students by resource professionals and land stewards–First Nation’s community members, university instructors, consultants, tenure holders, professional foresters, etc. Throughout camp, students are pushed to integrate and synthesize what they learn from camp with their work and life experiences. Teams are then asked to develop a high-level plan for a year’s worth of timber extraction in the John Prince Research Forest while keeping in mind values outlined by First Nations, trappers, free range cattle ranchers, and others presenting at camp.

For 17 years, field camp students have visited Scott and Lynn Pichette at the base camp for Bowron River Guiding, nestled in the Aleza Lake Research Forest on the north bank of the Bowron River. What in the early days of camp was a four-hour afternoon visit and jet boat ride has evolved into a two-night stay with Scott and Lynn with the guide outfitting module being a 36-hour immersion by students into the life of a guide outfitter, all of it being sponsored by the Guide Outfitters Association of BC. The stay and the course assignment that goes with it are a primer for the student’s field camp case study–Managing BC Forests for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. The student assignment is to listen to Scott and Lynn’s presentation about their guiding tenure, ask questions, spend time in the jet boat, experience camp life, visit a hunting stand, and do some moose calling. Students then get together as teams and devise a plan to extract a year’s worth of timber from the Aleza Lake Research Forest while doing it in a way that considers Scott’s needs for moose and his business.

Students learn to incorporate into their thinking that the things important to moose, and Scott, are things not usually considered in industrial forest management such as leaving lots of mature forest cover, minimizing brush control and eliminating herbicide use, ensuring roads are rehabilitated, leaving, and not piling and burning trees that can be used as firewood, and keeping cut block openings small with irregular edges. Once each student team has developed their plan, they meet with Scott and discuss with him how they propose to harvest timber while keeping in mind what Scott and moose value. Students seek feedback from Scott about what they propose to do in the forest where they and Scott are both tenure holders. With Scott, students learn to see the forest and ways to manage it for more than just the timber. This goes a long way to preparing them for their case study final project where they must consider multiple rights-holder and stake holder values in their high-level plan. As I sit in one of Scott’s stands while crafting this article and think about what I have observed over the 20years I have taught this camp, I realize that it is this experience with the guide outfitter, in this part of field camp, that is likely the first time forestry students are forced to think this hard and this far outside of forest values being more than timber. In my opinion, this helps to prepare our next generation of natural resource managers for careers in a forest industry that is changing rapidly and that must consider all things. Because moose (and many other species) require more than what clear-cut industrial forestry leaves behind, students acknowledge the need for good amounts of mature cover and browse to remain after the logging equipment has left and therefore see the need to think more “broad” and less “board.” This is more than a play on words and in fact may be the kind of thinking on which resource professionals must focus if we seriously value biodiversity and ecosystem services and if we, as land stewards, are to help the province achieve its stated goals of: “leading the world in sustainable environmental management”(The Wildlife Program Plan) and to ensure moose are maintained as integral components of natural ecosystems throughout their range (Provincial Framework for Moose Management in BC).