Joe McWilliams

Lakeside Leader

The SL Forest PAC meets twice per year. It’s organized by the forest products companies working in the area, plus the local office of Alberta Forestry and Parks. On the agenda this time were reports by the mills on their harvesting plans, a forest health report from Forestry, the Lesser Slave Lake Watershed Council, the Lesser Slave Lake Bird Observatory and a report by Vanderwell Contractors on its commercial thinning operation.

Harvest plans
One of the more interesting bits of information in the Vanderwell Contractors presentation on its harvesting plans for the coming months was that an area by the east end of Fawcett Lake is a priority. Asked why, Vanderwell’s Chris Belanger said because the provincial government has identified it as a ‘high-risk area,’ in need of ‘hazard fuel’ reduction.

“It’s a push across the province,” added Vanderwell’s Woodlands Manager Mike Haire. Vanderwell had planned to log the 700-hectare area in question anyway, Haire said, but the government is “asking us to speed up our plans.”

Sherman Horsman reported on Tolko’s harvest plans, but said, “if things deteriorate on the sales front, we may go closer in.” This was likely a reference to anticipated obstacles to selling their products in the United States.

The fires are playing havoc with West Fraser’s harvest planning.

“We had a plan,” said woods manager Tracey Courser, starting her presentation. “I think we jinxed the Slave Lake forest!”

A full year of fire-salvage logging is looking likely, she said.

Slave Lake Pulp’s harvesting plans are for various areas south of the lake in their FMA. Some of it will be of trees killed in the 2023 fires in that area, company rep Jeff Blocka said.

Fire!
Tanis Blocka of Alberta Wildfire’s Slave Lake office passed on the latest on the wildfire situation in the region. Fourteen of the 110 fires this year were burning out of control, she said. Area burned was just over 300,000 hectares.

A camp to house firefighters is being built on the Chipewyan Lake road, Blocka said. They’ll be focusing on the two biggest fires in the northeast part of the region – neither of which had seen much suppression activity to date.

The Edith Lake Fire, on the other hand, had seen a lot of suppression activity. Blocka described the situation down there (in the Swan Hills) as “not bad.” A day later it had been downgraded to ‘being held.’

The fire that closed Hwy. 88 for a couple of days has been dubbed the Blue Sky Fire, Blocka said. It hadn’t seen much growth.

Blocka also mentioned the fire ban in the whole region. How about an ATV ban? somebody asked. It’s a discussion point, Blocka said.

Commercial thinning
Mike Haire of Vanderwell Contractors did a slide show and report on commercial thinning the company is doing. Some of it is in privately owned stands of spruce. They’ve now reached 27 years, which Haire said is a reasonable time to do the thinning. It’s a money-losing operation, given the cost versus the return from the harvested wood, but considered worth it in the long run. The result will be much faster growth of the remaining trees, Haire said. It’s expected those trees will be harvested in another 10 years.

The thinning is done with small, versatile, specialized equipment, which not a lot of people around here know how to operate, Haire said. Lots do in New Brunswick, though, where this method of forest management has been in practice for a few decades more.

Why Vanderwell’s are doing this sort of project, Haire explained, is to counteract the loss of timber elsewhere in the land base, through fires, parks, non-timber values and others.

“It gets more with less,” he said.

Haire said the company plans to do a thinning project on Crown land also, in the Calling Lake area.

Bird monitoring
Lesser Slave Lake Bird Observatory (LSLBO) Executive Director Patti Campsall provided the latest statistics and highlights of migration monitoring and banding at the observatory in Lesser Slave Lake Provincial Park. It’s been a slower-than-average year, she said, both in numbers of birds observed and birds banded. One reason for the former, it seems, is that a lot of the earlier migrants had passed through before the April 16 start-up of the monitoring program.

One encouraging result has been the abundance of Canada warblers. This bird is considered threatened, nationally, Campsall said, but there is talk of ‘de-listing’ it in Alberta, based on recent observations.

Another unusual development is the presence of a researcher from the Cornelll (University) Lab, doing research into the yellow-rumped warbler.

Also in the works is the possibility of something called a ‘ MOTUS’ tower being set up in the area. It would be part of a network of such communication installations that detect signals from birds that have been fitted with tiny signal-emitting devices.

The recent Songbird Festival, Campsall said, wrapping up her report, was the busiest ever.

Watershed
Lesser Slave Lake Watershed Council (WC) Executive Director Meghan Payne gave a brief history of the organization and what it’s up to these days. That includes testing for water quality and quantity, looking at such things as riparian area health, bio-diversity, land use and stewardship.

At the moment, the WC is working up what sounds to be a fairly comprehensive ‘state of the watershed’ sub-basin report on the Swan River.

A new thing going on is a study of benthic invertebrates, which Payne said are “a pretty good indicator of aquatic health.”

Invasive mussles came up in the conversation. They are not in Alberta yet, Payne said, and the authorities really, really (really!) don’t want them here. If they were found, in Lesser Slave, for example, the authorities could shut the whole lake down while they deal with it, she said.

The WC annual general meeting is June 19 in High Prairie. Payne mentioned it several times and seemed to be encouraging people to attend.

Forest health
Tanis Blocka’s next bit was on various assaults on the health of the forest other than fire. She showed a map of the region with ‘pest areas’ indicated. These are from various bugs or diseases that have killed or defoliated trees. Curiously, mountain pine beetle wasn’t one of them.

However, Blocka did a separate piece on the notorious MPB. She said it is in an “endemic phase.” This appears to mean it’s there, but not doing too much. There was “no mass attack” evident last year, she said, so no control (i.e. cutting and burning infected trees) measures were done this past winter.