NAIT Forest Technology
September 7, 2016 6:39 pm Leave your thoughts
With the summer coming to a close and the impending school year looming over us, I thought I would take the opportunity to talk a little about the Forest Technology program at NAIT. Our program is all about practical application. This is evident right from the get-go when our first five weeks of class are done from cabins in the middle of the Albertan wilderness called Kidney Lake. The second we are taught things like collecting tree measurements, compass traversing, or ground truthing aerial photos, we are marched out the classroom doors into the woods and we begin doing it for real. When being taught to combat wildfires, we get geared up and make our way to the lake and set up pumps and start hauling hose through the woods. And when class ends, there’s no end to the hiking trails, the canoe trips on the lake, or simply sitting around the campfire and getting to know the people who will be there for the next two years of your life. Once those initial five weeks come to an end and we head back into the city, we begin a much more normal school experience, interspersed with a few field labs a week in the area surrounding Edmonton. In the remainder of the first year we cover things like forest management, forest measurements, plant and ecosite identification, basic plant biology, forest soils and geomorphology, introduction to GIS, and much more that I am completely blanking on. The highlight of the first year for nearly everybody however are those first five weeks spent in wood-stove heated cabins. If you ever run across a NAIT Forest Technology graduate, be sure to ask about Kidney Lake and the stories will fly.
Heading to my second and final year of the program, I am not even 100% certain what exactly it will entail. There is a few things I have heard from last year’s graduates, but I have not looked too deeply into this year as I sort of enjoy learning about things as I go. I know of a few big reports that we have been told about in tones that suggest we will emerge from them humbled. I know we will be taking a closer look at wildlife, insects, and disease, and that we will be doing a logging lab which given my years of experience in the matter, I really look forward to. I also know that similar to first year, we are once again starting off in camp. This year we will be spending three weeks in Hinton in cabins which are a bit of an upgrade from Kidney Lake, but with a more intensive schedule.
All in all I am genuinely looking forward to school. It’s an amazing program with some amazing people, it will be a shame when it ends.
