10

THE- WESTERN CANADIAN LUMBER WORKER

FORESTRY'S

QUIET REVOLUTION

IAN MacALPINE
NOW | ask you, is a university campus
any place for grown men to be
spending their time feeding booze to
bugs? | remember when, as kids, we put
beer in the cat’s saucer. and thought the
results hilarious. But shenanigans like

this in the heart of the academic com- °

munity?

It happened, sure enough, here at
UBC.

A forest scientist collaborating with a
former student discovered — exactly how
is still a bit hazy — that the fir boring
beetle, foe of Douglas Fir logs, is an alco-
holic, and thus produced a major advance
against a serious threat to British Colum-
bia’s multi-million-dollar forest industry.
The industry is better able to prevent
damage to stored logs now that it knows
the boozy beetle can t stay away from the
alcohol produced by rotting bark.

This is one of the happenings the peo-
ple at the UBC Faculty of Forestry like to
recount when they tell you about the quiet
revolution that has been going on inside
the red-brick walls of that big, new build-
ing at the south end of Main Mall, fittingly
named the H. R. MacMillan Building.

So thorough has been the change that
pre-1965 forestry graduates probably
would be bewildered by many of the pro-
ceedings going on now at their Alma
Mater. Approximately half the curriculum
is new and continually changing.

“We're shifting with the times and the
need,” says Dr. Joseph A. F. Gardner, the
internationally-known scientist who heads
the faculty. “There has been an explosion
in knowledge and technology in the last
10 or 15 years and we’ve been up-grading
and modernizing the curriculum over the
past several years.”

KEY WORDS NOW

The key words now in forestry are
“multiple use.” In B.C. the forest may be
king, but it must share the court with
wildlife, fisheries, recreation, parks, graz-
ing and water production, all of which are
legitimate Jand uses which often conflict
with exploitation of the timber resource.
This means the faculty must train, as it
is, economists, biologists, hydrologists
and people expert in other fields as well
if they are to keep the multiple uses of
the forest resource in perspective.

Gone are the days when a forester
was, well, a fellow we pictured as wearing
a bright plaid wool shirt and maybe a
couple of days’ growth of beard who
spent his time jumping over downfalls as
he roamed the woods in search of the
ripest trees.

“The general public doesn’t really un-
derstand what a professional forester is,”
says Dean Gardner. “They have an idea
that he fights fires all the time or runs
around in hobnail boots counting trees.
But he’s our forest land resource man-
ager, responsible for maintaining our
forest environment.”

It's indicative of the changes in for-
estry education that the dean himself is
not a forester. He is a chemist, a wood
chemist, who before becoming dean of
forestry five years ago was head of the
federal Forest Products Laboratory in
Vancouver. And he describes forestry as
a “conglomerate,” a multi-discipline

training using the sciences to achieve
practical ends.

This scientific base is amply _ illus-
trated in the faculty’s curriculum. For ex-
ample, because seven undergraduate
courses utilize an IBM 360 computer, stu-
dents are required to take a course in
computer science. They do operational
research in linear and dynamic program-
ming, which helps to solve timber alloca-
tion problems. While experienced men
are doing the job now, often these tech-
niques offer additional savings of time
and money, factors which appeal to in-
dustry.

The emphasis is on providing students

with a broad education, reflecting the fact
that forestry has become a broad subject
and not a discipline by itself, and recog-
nizing that industry and government want
liberally educated graduates. Where there
were a dozen faculty members a few
years ago there are now more than 30,
including specialists in forest soils, forest
land classification, harvesting and water-
shed management, to list just a few.

And the appearance on staff of a spe-
cialist in reclamation of disturbed land
illustrates how up-to-the-minute the cur-
riculum has become, for only recently has
B.C. hosted industry that changes the
face of the landscape.

There are courses that teach students
how to develop forest land for recreation,
to preserve and produce fish and game,
and to understand forestry’s impact upon
the environment. Students still learn the
basics of forest firefighting and the con-
struction and maintenance of forest trans-
portation systems, but they also study
about things the modern age has brought,
like the manufacture of laminated wood
and the use of the computer.

Research within the faculty has mush-
roomed. A few years ago not 20 graduate
students were engaged in research. Now
there are more than 60. The study that
discovered ihe fir boring beetle is an al-
coholic is but one of many faculty proj-
ects. Similar studies are finding ways of
curbing the growth of the balsam woolly
aphid, another forest land pest, and for-
est scientists are working on a method of
eliminating the obnoxious odor from kraft
pulp mills, a potential blessing for resi-
dents of a dozen or more B.C. communi-
ties. Others are involved in a 10-year
study of forest hydrology in the Greater
Vancouver watershed, to ascertain what
influence vegetation and land use has
upon water yield and quality. Another

OCTOBER, 1970

faculty member has developed a high-
energy water jet that can be used to cut
timber.

What made this new kind of training
necessary was a rapid change in the for-
est industry itself, and the competing
pressures upon the forest resource which
resulted in the multiple use concept. What
helped make it possible was the estab-
lishment of a forestry option at the B.C.
Institute of Technology six years ago for
training forest technologists. ‘Until that
time it was all university training,” said
Dean Gardner. “There was a sad lack of
skilled technicians and this meant in
many Cases university graduates were be-
ing used as technicians.” With BCIT fur-
nishing industry with skilled ‘‘doers,”
UBC has bent its efforts to produce ‘‘man-
agers” and “planners”.

Despite all this, the forestry faculty
admits to one problem. There aren’t
enough students entering forestry. Grad-
uating classes in recent years have aver-
aged 50 to 60 students, and Dean Gardner

says there ought to be at least double that
number.

THE PUBLIC IMAGE

The dean cites two reasons for the
small enrolment. The faculty itself has
been preoccupied with acquiring new
Staff and getting settled into its new build-
ing, which is shared by Agriculture. And
the public image of the forester as a man
who spends all his time romping through
the woods hasn’t encouraged too many
would-be foresters. But this, too, is about
to change. A campaign aimed at reflect-
ing the forester’s true image and enlighi-
ening young people about the wide vari-
ety of careers open to the professional
forester will be started shortly.

_ One hopeful sign that more public
interest already has been-generated, and
yet another indicator of the forester’s
changing role, is the appearance of
women in the forestry classroom. Four
women are scheduled to enter first year

See “FORESTRY'S QUIET REVOLUTION’—Page ul