Forestry: Canada’s Sustainable Employer

13 juin 2013 11:10 Published by Jeremy Woo Laisser vos pensées

Would you like to work for a company that believes in operating in a stewardly manner? Where renewing the forest resource for the future is a key focus?

Given today’s socially conscious workforce, it’s no wonder that many of us are thinking about the impact our employers have on the environment and the implications of our career choices.

I’m Jeremy Woo, a human resources intern at Tolko Industries. I am proud to work for a Canadian company that is dedicated to renewing its forest resources through scientific application of forestry practices and replanting harvested areas.

All too often, the forestry sector is misperceived as a reckless, clear-cutting, and compassionless industry with no regard for sensitive environmental issues. In fact, it is quite the contrary at Tolko, a Vernon, British Columbia-based forestry products company that is dedicated to creating a renewable future by utilizing silviculture practices to promote superior forest regrowth.

During my first week at Tolko, I had the opportunity to visit Tolko’s Eagle Rock Division, which is entirely dedicated to reforestation. An astounding 5.8 million trees are being grown at the Eagle Rock Nursery this year alone!

As a student with no forestry background, I quickly learned that the process isn’t as simple as planting a seed in the ground and hoping for the best.  Tolko commits itself to a long, thorough process to ensure the optimal regrowth of our forests.

In British Columbia, prior to harvesting a group of trees, a prescription for reforestation is made. Tolko creates a plan that specifies how to regrow or replant the area, what species to grow, and what size of seedling is optimal for reforestation.

Tolko’s Woodlands group then shares this plan with the British Columbia Ministry of Forests through an online portal called SPAR –Seed Planning and Registry.

After registering the plan, Tolko then searches for a nursery that can provide the highest quality product at a fair price, and this nursery is assigned to the plan.

For Crown land reforestation, tree cones are processed at the Surrey Tree Seed Centre.  The extracted seed is stored at -18 Celsius in the Tree Seed Centre’s freezers and will remain viable for over 40 years. When an order is received for seed, what follows is a process that mimics a Canadian spring, called stratification. The seeds are taken out of the freezer and soaked for 24 hours then surface dried.  Depending on the species, this is followed by 0 to 150 days in a 2-4 degrees Celsius refrigerator.

 

At long last, the seed is ready to be sent to the nursery.   Only a portion of Tolko’s British Columbia seedlings are grown at Eagle Rock; the balance of the company needs is grown at other nurseries.   Using a mechanized system, Eagle Rock Nursery sows the seed in styro-blocks filled with a peat growing media.  Each block is the same width and length but varies in height and the number of cavities which can range from 60 to 240.  A block with lesser cavities produces larger trees and the cost of the seedling increases proportionally.

Sowing occurs from March to May at Eagle Rock.  Tree seed is very valuable, so quality control is important to ensure accuracy of sowing.   When sowing is complete, the styro-blocks are sent to a greenhouse or outside compound depending on the species being grown and the time of the year.

The germination percent of the seed varies and, as a result, often more than one seed per cavity is sown.  This later requires thinning and transplanting.  Extra seedlings are removed from individual cavities and empty cavities are filled so that each cavity of the styro-block contains only one growing tree.  At Eagle Rock, the trees are grown until late October when extraction and packaging from the styro-blocks begins using a mechanized system.  The harvest ends in December and by this time, all of the bundled trees are in plastic bags packed in cardboard boxes located in a cold storage facility at -2 degrees Celsius, much like a true Canadian winter.

Finally, in the spring, the trees are taken to the forests and replanted.  Company-wide, Tolko reforested a staggering 27,000 hectares of forest in 2012 alone. More than 38 million Tolko trees were planted last year, thanks to Tolko’s outstanding commitment to the environment and this lengthy reforestation process.

However, replanting isn’t the only way that Tolko promotes regrowth of forests. A plethora of methods are carefully chosen by professional foresters to ensure ideal reforestation in each unique situation, making trees a truly renewable resource.

At Tolko, Canada’s greenest resource is constantly being renewed superiorly through progressive and innovative silviculture practices, making the forestry industry an employer of choice for an environmentally-savvy generation.

Tolko’s dedication to ensuring a renewable future is not all talk – it’s already all around us in the air we breathe, and the great Canadian forests that we all treasure.

Perhaps this is why forestry sector employees are in fact the Greenest Workforce.

Thank you:

 Rod Massey, Divisional Supervisor, Eagle Rock Division

Tolko Employees at Eagle Rock Division

John Dunford, Manager, Forestry Environment

Mark Tamas, Manager, Stewardship and Tenure