Sustainable Forestry

SIC: Training and Education in Maine

Maine's SFI Program has helped establish criteria for logger-training programs in order to further the professionalism of loggers and to help build a foundation for a comprehensive approach to sustainable timber harvesting. In Maine, over 4000 loggers have undergone training for these standards thus far.

Criteria include:

• Awareness of AF&PA Sustainable Forestry Principles;
• Best Management Practices including road construction and retirement, site preparation, and streamside management;
• Regeneration, forest resource conservation, and aesthetics;
• Awareness of responsibilities under the Endangered Species Act and other measures to protect and enhance wildlife habitat;
• Logging safety;
• OSHA and wage and hour rules;
• Transportation;
• Business management: and
• Public policy and outreach.

Maine SFI: Specialty Workshops

In addition to baseline training efforts, 40 specifically focused workshops have been conducted statewide over the last three years for over eight hundred loggers, landowners and foresters. Topics have included:

Water Quality: Maine's SFI sub-committee on Education has developed two levels of training that will help protect water quality.

• Level One BMP is an introduction to harvesting techniques called Best Management Practices (BMPs). This one-day seminar is intended to provide a foundation of understanding of the premise behind BMPs.
• Level Two BMP leaves off where Level One ended by introducing the participants to the planning aspect of a harvest in terms of how and where to apply BMPs. In both workshops, participants are required to participate in hands-on exercises in the field using these techniques.

Aesthetics: Given the role that aesthetics plays in the minds of the public when they assess the quality of a harvest operation, the Education Committee has also developed a workshop on harvesting aesthetics. The workshop is focused on:

• techniques to enhance the presentation of areas directly in or around the harvest that have the greatest exposure to the public;
• a hands-on approach in the field that allows participants to evaluate and critique effectiveness of demonstrated techniques and visual concepts.