Alberta’s forest workforce — green and growing!
Does your mental image of a forest worker come complete with a bushy beard, red-plaid shirt and chain-saw?
Rosie Anderson spends much of her day at a computer screen, using high-tech imaging systems to explore the forest – she may not match your first idea, but she’s right at home in the current wave of forest industry workforce expansion. As a Geomatic Engineering Technician for Millar Western’s Whitecourt woodlands operations, says Rosie, “I get involved in all stages of the forest management cycle, from planning through harvesting and replanting. I’m part of a company that has been harvesting and regrowing trees on this landbase for the better part of a hundred years, and I get to help keep that cycle going, so that generations from now we’ll still be working in the forest. That’s pretty rewarding.”
Rosie’s colleague Shannon Crossland, a Forest Protection Coordinator, also gets excited about her work: “I fight fires, fly in helicopters, drive quads, play with water – and I get paid to do it! Who wouldn’t love this job?” She’s happy that her position has also provided the opportunity to provide a model for aboriginal youth seeking new education and career paths and for women considering work in non-traditional areas: “There are huge opportunities in the forest industry – if you study hard, train hard, work hard, all doors are open.”
That’s no exaggeration. It’s estimated Canada’s forest industry will need to hire some 60,000 people by 2020, and about 20,000 of those positions will be filled here in Alberta. Some will see men and women working as foresters in the woodlands surrounding communities like Whitecourt, Boyle and Fox Creek. Others will involve the traditional skilled trades, like millwrights and electricians, already in high demand at the region’s lumber, panelboard, pulp, and newsprint mills.
But the forest industry – making aggressive moves into non-traditional markets like China and developing new products like nanocrystalline cellulose, biochemicals, and bioenergy – also offers opportunities for chemical engineers, international marketers, accounting and finance specialists, environmental scientists, and innovators of all stripes.
“Ours has always been a progressive industry,” says Allan Bell, the Millar Western Pulp Engineering Superintendent responsible for integrating a bioenergy project — generating green electricity from mill waste — into the company’s Whitecourt pulp operations, “but these are especially fast-moving times, with the industry investing in technological innovation and seeking to apply a lot of new expertise. We’re working to become more efficient, reduce our impacts, develop new products, and enter new markets. And that means we’ll need new recruits and ideas coming into the industry, to add to the knowledge base we’ve built over the years.”
Responding to this need, the Forest Products Association of Canada has launched Vision 2020, and the Alberta Forest Products Association, Work Wild, a program aimed at exposing young Albertans to the variety of careers in forestry. AFPA’s Cam Rollins has brought Work Wild to more than 21,000 students, teachers and other Albertans over the past two years, and it seems his message – that jobs in the forest sector offer career growth and diversity as well as a rewarding lifestyle – is hitting home with Alberta youth. Post-secondary enrollment in forestry programs has climbed sharply in the past two years. Since 2010, qualified applicants for NAIT’s forestry program have nearly doubled and enrollment in the University of Alberta’s forestry program has quadrupled. And this doesn’t include all the other forest-related occupations, like the trades, engineering, and environmental sciences.
“There’s no question the biggest factors for young people making career and education decisions are meaning and balance,” says Cam. “They want to know their work will make a positive contribution, and they want to know their careers will fit into a well-rounded life. And that’s what the forest industry offers.”
The forest industry already provides the lifestyle that people desire. Now the industry’s working to get that message out to prospective forest workers, so it can fill those 20,000 roles and continue to generate the fresh ideas that make forestry such a rewarding field of work.
By the way, if you happen to have a bushy beard and a red-plaid shirt, you’re still more than welcome to apply!