Operations up but planting numbers down; PLUS Introducing The Cache, WFCA Bulletin Board

Wait for the sign: an auspicious portent last year over a planting camp near Burns Lake. 2025, so far, is going well, according to field reports. Photo LL. WFCA.CA

According to information from provincial seedling storage operators, about a third of their tree cartons have been delivered to the field since Interior planting began in April. 

If things continue to go smoothly, these refrigerated warehouses will be mostly empty by the summer solstice. Summer hot-lift planting usually begins again around July. 

This year’s provincial planting volume is down about 60-million from the 2020 +300-million estimated to be the sector’s full capacity. 

That reduction in work for the overall seasonal labour force of approximately 7000 has been hardest on new recruits with only half of the usual thousand or so rookies hired, according to anecdotal reports. 

New First Aid regulations seem to be working with both contractors and WorkSafeBC figuring out what they mean in practice. Alberta’s planting at ~100-million has not been affected like the BC program allowing some BC planters to continue to cross the Cordillera for the summer planting east of here. 

No contractors are shorthanded with some reporting more returnees due to stunted prospects in other parts of the work economy. Drought remains a concern due to the lower snowpack levels with accounts of the last of the snow on blocks, in some places, seeming to sublimate.

 Anticipated wetter weather fronts this month may offer some relief. But continental long-range forecasts say things will heat up across the country to above normal later this spring and summer. As we go to press, crews are waiting out wildfire activity in Manitoba related to a recent heat wave.

The Cache  traffics in resource materials, job postings, and lately expert advice on First Aid, employment standards, and career and occupational paths.

Following the launch last March of an online Job board at The Cache,  the industry website has continued to grow with a new “Ask an Expert” section to answer questions posed by workers. The Job Board provides a method of posting work opportunities outside the channels of conventional social media. 

Postings have thus far included openings for tree planters, nursery workers, camp and kitchen workers, and firefighters. “Ask an Expert” articles have addressed topics related to new first aid guidelines, personal protective equipment, and employment standards, with new topics covered weekly.

The Cache is not intended to replace existing social media on Meta (Facebook) or Reddit, but instead it is designed to work in parallel and provide a forum for employers and employees that choose to avoid other media. Moving forward, The Cache will also provide a hub for online training opportunities, career development mapping, and other resources for people seeking to learn about silviculture work or advance their careers in the field.

Posting jobs on The Cache is free, and job ads and links to The Cache are shared across other social media platforms to broaden the audience.  With the primary recruitment pool for silviculture comprising young people between the ages of 18 and 25, 

The Cache fills an important space in the industry social media strategy. The Cache will also provide an important means of centralizing and increasing access to training as the industry adapts its workforce and skill sets to deal with changing industry needs, new hazards associated with climate change, and shifts in economic conditions and workforce composition.

Article reprinted from WFCA Round-Up May 2025 

http://www.mccollmagazine.com 

Strategy is there but WFCA wonders if regulations are disappearing

The Western Silviculture Contractors Association (WSCA) is delivering tree-planting training this year through the federally funded and provincially administered Community Development Trust Fund. John Betts, WSCA Executive Director, says, "First Nations are training in driving on resource roads, operating brush saws, running all-terrain-vehicles, and driving crew buses," on highways and resource roads.
     

"We delivered training last year in the Chilcotin and Blue Collar Silviculture's Mark Courtney instructed a class in the field. It was an opportunity for the First Nation trainees to experience the life of a tree planter in a forestry bush camp," says Betts. He believes training in these close quarters produces an excellent outcome for silviculture contractors. 
     

"The trainees get the inside track on the 'stocking' standards in B.C. forestry," which species of trees are used, and the spacing and placement requirements of the seedlings. Betts notes that the province of B.C. has been depending on nature to take it's course in regeneration of forests. 
     

"We have seen a lower priority given to stocking the forests with seedlings. We went from planting 250 million seedlings a couple years ago to planting 160 million this year," and even fewer next year. He says that 40 percent of the MPB ravaged landscape is not growing any new trees. 
     

"We have 18 million hectares of MPB degraded forests in B.C. alone," including forests eaten by the spruce bud worm. "We have many areas with bug kill, other blights, and forest fire burned areas where restoration is being ignored." Betts notes that arguments made by Keith Atkinson, CEO of the First Nation Forestry Council, correctly identify the problems in a sketchy funding regime.
     

"The FNFC recognizes that we have crushing regeneration issues and huge demands for landscape level replanting operations," including transmission line corridors, highways, and watersheds. Electrical grid failure is just one of the threats in the forest fire (inferno) scenario. Destruction of watersheds also demands more attention."
     

Meanwhile the province is overrun by environment lobbies that want to lock-down forestry operations, "They are not recognizing the problem. Leaving forests alone is perilous when fires are increasing in number and severity." Betts notes that historically First Nations used a lot of fire to manage forests and make them produce specific plants, trees, and ecologies.
     
"The so-called natural fires have been eliminated by suppression and fire is gone as a forestry management tool. In place of managed fires the unnatural fires we see are non-renewing events." The intensity of these unnatural fires wipes out water resources, aquatic plants included, and all the grasses and trees in an ecology disappear. 
     

Worst of all, the soil gets super-heated and destroyed as an eco-system. Unfortunately, says Betts, "We see no real strategy and the demand is growing to get involved with biomass reclamation and refurbishing of these provincial forests.
     

"Nature won't be fooled. Interior forests are being left behind, whereas these landscapes require a change in strategy." First Nations are blazing the trail in the pursuit of a biomass economy from these decadent forests. "They see perpetual employment and management requirements for the eco-systems in their territories."
     

Betts believes the existing proposals for use of biomass are too large, and should be made smaller than those seen in the BC HYDRO call for power scenarios, like the 40 MWh cogeneration plant in Gitxsan and the 60 MWh plant in T'silcotin. "Go smaller, scale back the size of the projects to 1 to 5 MWh and make more of them," because smaller plants make more efficient use of biomass to create electricity."
     

While restoration strategies are in place the regulations behind it are being deleted left and right, and, Betts adds, "The premier may say, 'Well I'm not getting any calls on this,' but it appears that overall he's not paying attention to a degrading public resource."