Under the Canopy
On Outdoor Journal Radio's Under the Canopy podcast, former Minister of Natural Resources, Jerry Ouellette takes you along on the journey to see the places and meet the people that will help you find your outdoor passion and help you live a life close to nature and Under The Canopy.
Under the Canopy
Episode 81: Ontario Woodlot Association with Glen Prevost
Our latest episode focuses on the vital role of private forests in environmental stewardship and the sustainable management practices advocated by the Ontario Woodlot Association. Glen Prevost shares insights on how landowners can navigate challenges such as invasive species, create detailed management plans, and connect with community resources to enhance their wooded properties.
• Interview with Glen Prevost from Ontario Woodlot Association
• Importance of private forests for ecological health
• Overview of the Managed Forest Tax Incentive Program
• Steps to start tapping maple syrup sustainably
• Managing forests for wildlife, especially deer
• Discussion of invasive species and prevention strategies
• Introduction to the Private Forest Inventory Project
• Role of community and volunteer efforts in forest management
• Events, webinars, and opportunities for engagement
• Encouragement for landowners to take proactive stewardship steps
Hi everybody. I'm Angelo Viola and I'm Pete Bowman. Now you might know us as the hosts of Canada's Favorite Fishing Show, but now we're hosting a podcast. That's right. Every Thursday, Ang and I will be right here in your ears bringing you a brand new episode of Outdoor Journal Radio. Now, what are we going to talk about for two hours every week? Well, you know there's going to be a lot of fishing.
Speaker 2:I knew exactly where those fish were going to be and how to catch them, and they were easy to catch.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but it's not just a fishing show. We're going to be talking to people from all facets of the outdoors, from athletes.
Speaker 3:All the other guys would go golfing Me and Garth and Turk and all the Russians would go fishing To scientists. But now that we're reforesting and everything.
Speaker 2:It's the perfect transmission environment for the line to be.
Speaker 4:To chefs If any game isn't cooked properly, marinated, you will taste it.
Speaker 1:And whoever else will pick up the phone Wherever you are. Outdoor Journal Radio seeks to answer the questions and tell the stories of all those who enjoy being outside. Find us on Spotify, apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 5:As the world gets louder and louder, the lessons of our natural world become harder and harder to hear, but they are still available to those who know where to listen. I'm Jerry Ouellette and I was honoured to serve as Ontario's Minister of Natural Resources. However, my journey into the woods didn't come from politics. Rather, it came from my time in the bush and a mushroom. In 2015, I was introduced to the birch-hungry fungus known as chaga, a tree conch with centuries of medicinal applications used by Indigenous peoples all over the globe. After nearly a decade of harvest use, testimonials and research, my skepticism has faded to obsession and I now spend my life dedicated to improving the lives of others through natural means. But that's not what the show is about. My pursuit of this strange mushroom and my passion for the outdoors has brought me to the places and around the people that are shaped by our natural world world. On Outdoor Journal Radio's Under the Canopy podcast, I'm going to take you along with me to see the places, meet the people that will help you find your outdoor passion and help you live a life close to nature and under the canopy. So join me today for another great episode and hopefully we can inspire a few more people to live their lives under the canopy, we can inspire a few more people to live their lives under the canopy. Okay, and as always, we want to thank all the listeners that we have across Canada, the states you know around the world, in Switzerland and Ghana and Trinidad and Tobago and all the other locations all around. We really, really appreciate all that you do for us and, as usual, if you have any questions or any suggestions for show, please just reach out to us. We'll be more than happy to see if we can accommodate you.
Speaker 5:Now, it was one of those frosty mornings I know we were recording earlier this week with Pierre Gagnon. It was minus what was it? Around minus 40, where he was minus 30, minus 40. And it was a little bit cool for him to be out and interesting and it was minus 20-something here and it was a little cold. Taking my chocolate lab ensign gunner out, as you can tell, he was doing the delicate paw dance out on the sidewalks, but in the bush it was no problem, just on the sidewalks. I think there was probably a little bit of salt that was stinging his paws, but he kind of did that little dance because I knew it was cold.
Speaker 5:Anyways, it was pretty cool, which just that time of the year and those kind of things we can expect here in our parts of the world. So this morning we're recording with a special guest from the Ontario Woodlot Association, glenn Prevost. Glenn, thanks for joining us this morning. Thanks for having me, jerry. Yeah, no problem. So tell us a bit about yourself, whereabouts are you, where are you located, and just so people around the world can get a sense from Toronto kind of where we're talking to right now.
Speaker 6:Yeah, I live in North Bay. It's a wonderful small city about four hours drive north of Toronto. I work here from my home and connect with my colleagues who are located all over the province remotely. I've got two little kids here. We love it here. We spend a lot of time outside when I'm not acting as the program manager for the Ontario Woodlot Association.
Speaker 5:Oh, very good. So how long have you been in North Bay?
Speaker 6:We moved here in 2018. Yeah, I got a job with a forestry research company and needed to be located in the North Bay area for that. I was an engineer prior to becoming a forester and we had lived in southern Ontario and in Hamilton and Kitchener and Waterloo, you know, just kind of outside of the Toronto area.
Speaker 5:Right, so what is it that you do with the forest industry then? What do you do with the forest company? Which company?
Speaker 6:Yeah so the Ontario Woodlot Association. Which company? Yeah so the ontario woodlot association. We, we represent the interests of, of private woodlot owners. We're about active management. We're about good, responsible management so that we have all those benefits from the forest. Um, we have 21 chapters, uh, about 2 600 members, and these are mostly small, small family owned woodlots. There are some larger ones and some some agencies that own some some land, and and so my job is to support those landowners in making sure that they have the knowledge and the tools, that their voices are heard so that they can do, you know, just the best job possible in sustainably managing their woodlots. Well, so, how, how long has the Ontario Woodlot Association been around and can do just the best job possible in sustainably managing?
Speaker 5:their woodlots. Yeah, so how long has the Ontario Woodlot Association been around? Is it all through the entire province? Because it sounds like you've got quite a few different locations or clubs. I guess. Is it that people belong to or districts, or how?
Speaker 6:Yeah, it's a chapter system. We have 21 chapters throughout the province. We do have some chapters in Northern Ontario where I am, in North Bay and in Sault Ste Marie, you know, a seven-hour drive kind of northwest of Toronto. We have plans to expand further north. We've been around since 1992, but really kind of took off as an organization, you know, moving from a volunteer base to professional staff, like myself about four years ago, and so we've grown dramatically from one and a half staff to eight staff and we just have a lot more capacity to provide support to landowners, to our chapters. They run about 100 events each year collectively and we support them with that, lots of training and conferences and those sort of things. But I cover the whole province oh very good.
Speaker 5:So where's head office for the Ontario Woodlot Association?
Speaker 6:We have a head office in Kemptville, which is about a 40-minute drive southeast of Ottawa, although we actually don't have many staff there. We've got one administrative person who lives in that area, but the rest of us are located throughout the province, which works really well because our membership is pretty dispersed. So we can get out there and meet our members, who are the base of our organization, readily and easily by having that distribution throughout the province.
Speaker 5:Right, so what is it that you provide for your members that belong to the association, or what basically does OK, so we're talking. How large are these woodlots we're talking about?
Speaker 6:So our, our average landowner has about 100 acres. We do have, we've supplied services to any private landowner, so that does include municipalities and conservation authorities, businesses that may own property, but the vast majority are individual families that own about 100 acres and they they, a lot of them manage, for, you know, they have it for recreation, for personal enjoyment, maybe a little bit of of sustainable income, but it's, it's about the lifestyle for them and that's that's what we support them with.
Speaker 5:Okay. So so tell us, what does the association provide? You mentioned some of those things. So how does it so you've got 100 acres and it's I don't know, say 40% forested? Kind of walk us through what the association does and why would somebody want to become a member?
Speaker 6:Well, a lot of folks buy their woodlot and maybe don't realize the level of effort and skill that needs to go into managing a forest. So then they start looking around for some help. Maybe they bought it, maybe they've inherited it and we're one of the first names that comes up. And so when they come to us, it's a $50 membership for the year. It's pretty inexpensive, and right away they start getting our magazine.
Speaker 6:It's a really great magazine that talks about different management issues and things that are going on in the organization, and so they can learn things about. You know how do I manage for wildlife, how do I take care of my wetlands, what are programs out there that support good management, like the Managed Forest Tax Incentive Program, and so they can learn about those things. They can also go on tours, so all of our chapters host tours so you can go and do peer-to-peer learning. So you can go, you know a concession over and you can see what your neighbors are doing, how they're managing, maybe for maple syrup, or maybe they're doing a timber harvest, or maybe they've built some trails and you want to understand how could I maybe do some of those things.
Speaker 5:Right. So where does the association get its research to say, okay, we've got basically a sugar bush, a maple hardwood here that somebody wants to put trails through to access for maple syrup harvesting or maple sap harvesting to make maple syrup? Where do you get your research that you provide to these individuals? Does it come from a multitude of sources or how does it work out?
Speaker 6:Yeah, we have professional staff. I'm a registered professional forester, so I've gone to school, I've got these skills. My colleagues are the same way. But we also have there's really great resources out there published by the province some coming out of the United States academic research papers. We also partner with a lot of other organizations who produce or are experts in fields like genetics, wildlife conservation, those sort of organizations, and so we're able to draw on them to provide really good advice for our landowners. And if our staff doesn't know the answer, we know somebody who does know the answer and we can put them in contact with that person and they can understand through that person, that expert, what they need to do.
Speaker 5:Okay, so let's walk us through a maple forest production. Somebody just bought this property. It's never been tapped, and how would you kind of suggest for them to start off to learn how to tap or to do their taps, because we're coming into maple syrup season, essentially, I just maybe focus a little bit on that.
Speaker 6:Yeah, I mean it's a great season and one of the great things about my job is that the common gift when you go to places is maple syrup. So I get lots of that. Yeah, it's a really nice perk. But so the first thing that I say to landowners is get a management plan in place. Enroll in the Managed Forest Tax Incentive Program. It's administered by the province of Ontario and you can reduce your property taxes on the forested area by 75%. You get a very skilled person who can come out and tell you about the property. They can identify opportunities or risks. They'll quantify you. You know the health of the forest, how big are the trees, what's the species distribution, and if you get a skilled person out there, they can teach you a lot. So that's the first step is get a management plan in place. The next, the next step okay, now we know what we have. Now we need to start implementing that plan or coming up with more specific plans.
Speaker 6:So if you wanted to do maple syrup production well, we often work with OMSPA, the Ontario Maple Syrup Producers Association, and so I might say you know what. You should really join their organization as well to learn about maple syrup production. It's a really great organization, peer-to-peer learning, very similar to us. They have some really great manuals, say for for managing sugar bushes. Um, then, if you need more help, you say geez, I don't know who to call. You can contact me and I'll say where, where do you live? And you know, I probably know a forest consultant in the area who could come out and help them with that, with that, uh, with their jobs and what they need done if they want some impartial advice. You know, like you know, I'm not being paid. I get my, you know my joy and my job from just helping people. They can ask me questions as well. So that's how we would get somebody. We would get somebody started. These specific questions, we'll point them to the right resources.
Speaker 5:Okay, and what about birch or walnut syrup? A lot of people may have heard about birch, but a lot of people have not heard about walnut syrup and things like that. Same thing there, but I don't think there's associations for birch or walnut that I'm aware of.
Speaker 6:No, I don't think, I don't believe there is. I would tell them to go to OMSPA. I mean, there'd be a lot of similar technologies and techniques that they would need to use it, you know, to get that sap and then turn it into syrup. So if they wanted to go there, that would probably be the place. But the underlying core management philosophy of a healthy forest provides you with, you know, all these benefits. That doesn't change if you're producing one product or the other. A healthy forest is an imperative.
Speaker 5:Right. So, Glenn, you mentioned that you're a forester. Whereabouts did you school and tell us a bit about your forestry experience in the forest industry?
Speaker 6:Yeah, so, like I said, I was an engineer before I became a forester. I went back to school. I went to the University of Toronto. They have a master's degree, um, in forest conservation. So I took that course, um, it's an accredited program, so it's recognized as a as a forestry program. That allows you then to to come out, get some work experience. I needed 18 months, um. I could then apply to the Ontario Professional Foresters Association for licensing and that's what I did and that's how I became a registered professional forester.
Speaker 5:Yeah, go ahead, go ahead. And then you worked in the industry for a bit before you worked with the Ontario Woodlot Association.
Speaker 6:That's right. I worked for an organization called FP Innovations and they're a very large forestry research organization everything from bioenergy to forest management to pulp and paper and because I had an engineering background, they wanted me out in the field talking with you know, with mills and wood producers and those sort of folks, and I could connect the forestry with the you know, with the wood production aspect of it. Following that, I left that organization because there was this opportunity with the Ontario Woodlot Association and you won't meet a nicer group of people than woodlot owners who care about their forest. They're just, they're amazing to work with and they're trying to do they are doing the right thing and to be able to help them do that is a pretty satisfying job.
Speaker 5:And you mentioned, with managing a forest for wildlife as well.
Speaker 6:Absolutely so. You know, anybody who wants to do, wants to manage their forest, wants to take care of their forest, as long as it falls within something that's sustainable, we can support that.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I happen to see on this was Facebook. There was somebody posting in the Bancroft area was looking for somebody to try and help develop deer. They had 100 acres, I believe it was, and they were looking to promote it for deer. And I know in the past when we had larger snow loads the impact on deer was very significant.
Speaker 5:So I worked with South Central it was Fish and Game, fish and Wildlife Association where we would work directly with the Ministry of Natural Resources and this group would go into deer yards at specific times of the year in order to do promotion by doing cuts and we would cut small. We would go into I think it was the French Settlement Road up near Coboconk and we would go into that. I did it for that one a number of years along with Nonquan, with the South south central fishing and game association, and we would do plots where we would cut with the ministry there and we would take the trees down to promote new growth and things like that for deer feed. So stuff like that you would be able to this person it would be the ideal, one sort of one, to direct to your association for looking at trying to manage your forest for deer.
Speaker 6:Yeah, that's right, that's right. So if you, if you want to manage for wildlife, if you want to manage for maple syrup, we have all those different resources and those those sort of strategies that you talked about. There are some, some patch cuts to promote young growth, so that you know, so that you've got good feed source. Making sure you've got some good conifer thickets, you know, so that the deer have a place to take cover in the winter. Those are all different things that we can provide recommendations on, but it gets to a larger issue, and that's the challenge of managing a small area. Now, some of those things don't pay and it can be quite expensive, and so that's where we come in to try and figure out cost-effective ways so that land managers can do those really good things on their property that provide benefit for them but also for their neighbors and in the local communities as well.
Speaker 5:I recall my uncle bless his soul he was him and his best friend, don had some property up Bob Cajun Way and they were having difficulty with deer crossing the road and a highway up that way, and so what they wanted to do and I worked with the ministry directly with this and what they wanted to do was kind of create a deer yard and this would be quite possibly in the 80s get the deer to yard in a different area so that they weren't crossing the road and having car collisions when the yard was where it was.
Speaker 5:So at that time that the it was actually a ceo conservation officer, he was very knowledgeable in developing the yards and it was an east-west running ridge. I recalled that required, as you mentioned, conifers for protection and they needed water sources in the area as well, which my uncle's property and Don's property were very had all the materials necessary to be successful and it was interesting that that particular one they said east-west running ridge so that the snow load doesn't build up and you need feed stations at both ends of it, otherwise the dominant bucks in the area would control the feed station and chase all the other deer away and none would, whereas if there was more than one feed station, then all the deer would get fed, which was interesting to learn all those kind of things and find out how it actually works. So that's the kind of stuff that your organization directly assists or helps promote or shows people what to do, I believe.
Speaker 6:Yeah, yeah, in the context of what they can reasonably accomplish on their property. I mean, the project you spoke about, I imagine it encompassed a fair-sized area and, in our cases, would probably cross a couple property boundaries. So that's where partnerships become really important partnerships with neighbors, partnerships with other organizations, whether they be governmental or not-for-profit, so that we can work together to achieve those goals.
Speaker 5:Mm-hmm. Yeah, the same goes for developing trails. Now somebody may want to. They have a property that want to access or use for, I don't know, cross-country skiing trails, horse trails, atv trails and the snowmobiling on their property and stuff like that. You assist with that kind of guidelines as well and help out.
Speaker 6:Yeah, we can provide some assistance with that.
Speaker 6:One of the things that we can help if you're talking about, like trail layout or even maple syrup layout, we have a private land inventory project where we're inventorying all private forests in the province using remote sensing, so that's like aerial LIDAR, where beams are shot at the forest and we can tell what's there, and so using information like that Excuse me we can look at topography, we can look at where wetness might occur.
Speaker 6:So you want to avoid those areas for trails. So it's a really interesting project. That's one aspect of it, but it can be used for all sorts of different management of properties and planning that landowners might want to do. So that's one of the tools that we could point them towards. And then, if they just want the nuts and bolts of what's on the ground and what to do for trail building, we can support with that. Although most properties are fairly well trailed, people have been living on these or using these areas, you know, after European settlement for 100 years or more, and there's quite a few trails and so we often help with trail maintenance. So running things like chainsaw safety courses with the chapters, people can go out and and do that maintenance themselves so what about stuff like chip barking trails and things like that?
Speaker 5:Do you promote that or any suggestions or advice in regards to that?
Speaker 6:Yeah, I mean, if you've got some areas that you would like to do that in, that could be one thing that could be done. I mean, it can be an expensive thing, and so usually what I'd be looking at, is there something else going on that requires the chipping of material? If there's not a direct requirement, you know, maybe financially it doesn't make sense to bring that in. Maybe I'm looking at okay, if you've got a wet or mushy area, maybe a reroute is a better area, a better use of time and resources than cutting trees and chipping them.
Speaker 5:Yeah, yeah, there was. When I was elected. I used to work with the Boy Scout camp and I found that there was a lot of tree maintenance companies that would go in, cut trees and then chip all the material. And actually I work with a few of them still now, to this day, and they're looking for places to dump and get rid of all these chips. And so what I did with them was I reached out to them because I saw chip piles eight, nine feet thick at the Boy Scout property and I was just like what a waste. And they were leveling out an area in which they had no problem. But I reached out to a lot of organizations being the schools and the churches in the area and things along those lines, and said look, if you people are looking for free chip bark for your gardens and your properties around trees and things, these and it got to be used by these places in a very effective way and it was very, very cost effective. So if people are looking to chip bark some of those ones and I've done it with some trails as well that they were, you know if we can find a place to get rid of these chips, we're more than happy to give you a load or two.
Speaker 5:And I've built a couple of trails with chip bark and I know I work with the city of Oshawa as well, and again that's South Central Ontario Fish and Wildlife Association. We brought volunteers out and the city dumped loads of chip bark that they had from the trees that they were you know, the boulevard trees and the park trees and all that that. They were trying to find things to do with these chips. And then we chip parked a trail in some of the areas in the city to use that along with the second marsh in Oshawa as well. We use huge amounts of city chips in that to chip the trail. So if you shop around, I think you can find ways to get them in a real cost effective way. I'm not suggesting to go out and chip a trail with stuff you buy at the garden center. Otherwise, like you said, that would be way, way too costly. But there are things that can be done.
Speaker 6:Yeah, yeah, the one caution I would have is if you're bringing any material in from another area.
Speaker 6:Invasive species can be a real challenge and so perhaps not a big issue moving chip material from within the city to another location within the city, but I would caution landowners from bringing in unknown sources from other places, otherwise they might be introducing a problem.
Speaker 6:We do have a program, because there's just so much underutilized biomass that you're talking about like that and um, there's, there's small plantations that need to be thinned, there are degraded forests that need work and they all produce often a low quality wood product and and they can't be sawn into into lumber often, and there's not many pulp mills around anymore. So we're actively working on projects that would use that biomass in different ways, like for soil amendment through biochar or compost or something like that. That would neutralize any of those challenges. So it's something we're very in tune with as well and are actively working on, because you can get benefits to the local bioeconomy. It's a sustainable, renewable resource and we improve the health of the forest at the same time. So you know, it's another example of some of the larger scale projects kind of. You know it's not just about specific help to the landowner, but about the whole private land forest industry that we're trying to really build up for them.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I know that and I tested some areas. You talk about biomass or residual components left over from the forest industry and I took a bunch of large quantities of chainsaw sawdust. So what I did was, when we were cutting, cutting I laid some tarps down and then I collected in the pails and I had a garden. It was just a garden at the front of the house that we're at. It's a flower garden, but the the material. We needed heavily concentrations of topsoil, because when we moved into the house had been depleted I don don't think there was. The nutrients were depleted.
Speaker 5:But what we did was I took the biomass or the sawdust from the chainsaws and mixed it in with the soil there and it seemed to have. Well, it seems to have a very good effect in a number of ways, in that the breakdown of the sawdust is adding to the nutrients in the soil and the not only that, but the mycelium that is used to break that down is bringing new plant life and life into that material there. I mean, it's only a small one, what would be three feet by what's that? 18 feet sort of thing. But I certainly saw a difference when I used the chainsaw chips going into there and making a difference. And now we've got uh well, I've got a large mint patch growing in that area very successfully. That's revitalized it, because the, the nutrients in it seem to be very, extremely depleted from before.
Speaker 6:So in those sorts of things do you get into that kind of level of detail with, yeah, with uh, people, yeah, we do, we do, and that that would be through our the biomass project and we partnered with a farm, um that we're piloting some some projects on and it is about soil amendments and a lot of soils have low organic matter in them, they've been depleted and we need to renew that and it just pairs so nicely with these forests that that need work and and need work and are capable of producing sustainable biomass for that purpose. The forest benefits, the soil elsewhere benefits. So, yeah, we get into that level of kind of detail and that broad scope of trying to help. But yeah, it doesn't surprise me that you saw benefits from doing that me that you saw benefits from doing that.
Speaker 5:Well, part of it went right back to my own grandfather, who was an immigrant from Poland, came across in the 1920s and my wife's parents. What they would do. They had a lot of maple and birch trees I think that was pretty much it maple and birch on their property. So in the fall time my father-in-law would take all the leaves and then rake them into one large pile and then take the lawnmower and to break it down with the lawnmower until it was very small size material and then they would actually blow it onto a tarp and then take that tarp full of leaves and then they would actually blow it onto a tarp and then take that tarp full of leaves and then work it in with a machine into their gardens and every year used all those leaf mass as material for developing their garden soil. And they had spectacular gardens and always was, and it was a great way to use the leaves that most people just put at the roadside here in the city.
Speaker 6:Yeah yeah, leaves themselves don't have a lot of organic matter or a lot of nutrients in them, but what they are is they're a really good substrate for all those organisms to live on and it's the base of the food web. And I'm glad to hear they put it into their garden, because one of the things that some landowners do we really strongly discourage it is dumping yard waste into the forest, thinking, oh, it's just the oil compost out there. But I mean you end up smothering the native vegetation. But, more importantly, you often end up introducing invasive species into the woodlot. And right now invasive species are the biggest challenge for private woodlot owners and our ecosystem health in general in Ontario.
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Speaker 5:And now it's time for another testimonial for Chaga Health and Wellness. Okay, here we are in Lindsay with Bill, who's actually? This gentleman has given blood over 230 times 233. 233, and that's amazing, and you've had some success with Chaga.
Speaker 7:Tell us what you're dealing with and what you did and what you used. Well, I had mild high blood pressure. It wasn't really high, but I was on medication for a few years. And then I quit drinking coffee and started drinking this tea, the combination tea, the green and the chaga Right, and my medication is gone.
Speaker 5:Your medications gone, gone and you couldn't give blood during the other times.
Speaker 7:Yeah, I could, oh, you could I could. Yeah, yeah, so, but a few times the machine kicked me out. Oh, yeah, so, but now it doesn't anymore.
Speaker 5:So you think the, the green tea and the chaga was helped to normalize your blood?
Speaker 7:pressures, oh yeah. Oh very good, because it wouldn't be just stopping coffee, it would have to be something else.
Speaker 5:And that's the only thing. You did different Yep.
Speaker 7:Well, we're thank you very much for that, and my blood pressure is probably that of a 40 year old man, and I'm 71. Oh, very good.
Speaker 5:Well, that's good to hear. Thank you very much for that, no problem. Okay, we interrupt this program to bring you a special offer from Chaga Health and Wellness. If you've listened this far and you're still wondering about this strange mushroom that I keep talking about and whether you would benefit from it or not, I may have something of interest to you. To thank you for listening to the show, I'm going to make trying Chaga that much easier by giving you a dollar off all our Chaga products at checkout all our Chaga products at checkout. All you have to do is head over to our website, chagahealthandwellnesscom, place a few items in the cart and check out with the code CANOPY C-A-N-O-P-Y. If you're new to Chaga, I'd highly recommend the regular Chaga tea. This comes with 15 tea bags per package and each bag gives you around five or six cups of tea. Hey, thanks for listening.
Speaker 5:Back to the episode, All right. So, Glenn, so you get involved with things like gypsy moths and oak wilt and all that kind of stuff as well for your members and kind of do? You mentioned a lot of programs, so you had the inventory program and the biomass program as well. So is there details that you assist with them for things like gypsy moth?
Speaker 6:Yeah, so we do do some work on spongy moth. It would be more about connecting them with a service provider, but the programs that we're working on right now is with hemlock woolly adelgid, and so that's if anybody listeners in ontario and elsewhere may know about emerald ash borer and it's basically, you know, in the process of killing almost all the ash trees. Um, hemlock woolly adelgid is a little aphid like insect that could do the same thing to to hemlock and is doing the same thing in the united states, just entered canada. So we we've written a guide for landowners how, how to manage it, very specific. You know, do this, do this, do this.
Speaker 6:We provided a lot of connections between different agencies to get this work done. We've done trial treatments to figure out what works best. We're giving presentations, you know, and we're working with the Ministry of Natural Resources to make sure that we have the tools that we need to manage those invasive species. Yeah, we do work on other invasive species like emerald ash borer, again working with the Ministry of Natural Resources to make sure that landowners have the tools available so that they can properly address those invasive species. So there's that partnership with the government. You know that advocacy component where we speak up for landowners to make sure they have it, in addition to developing very specific practical information and tools for them.
Speaker 5:Yeah, and maybe you can just expand a little bit on the hemlock, because I've done a number of podcasts dealing with things like oak wilt, which is affecting the red and the white oaks, one more so than the other one. It's not even noticed in the other one. It kills them off fairly quickly. Or the spongy moss, as you mentioned. Most people call them gypsy moss, just because that's what they're used to seeing. But the oak or the hemlock, maybe you can just elaborate a bit on that and what it is and what people should be looking out for.
Speaker 6:Oh, it's a nasty little insect. Came over from Japan, likely on nursery stock, in the early 1900s, Somewhere central United States on the East Coast, and has been slowly spreading but picking up steam in the last 20 years. And it's an aphid-like insect. It feeds at the base of hemlock needles and you can see it when, at certain phases of its life, it looks like a little woolly sack at the base of the needle and what it does is it basically starves the tree, because the needles are how the tree provides its energy through photosynthesis. But if the insect is sucking away all that energy before it can get to the tree, it essentially starves the tree. Right now it's located in Niagara region. It's also located in Northumberland, County Norfolk County, probably some other areas, County Norfolk County, probably some other areas.
Speaker 6:It's spread sporadically by humans, but also by birds. They're very small. They can hitch rides on birds so they can move quite long distances from one location to another and they can sit and you don't even notice that they're there. So landowners or anybody actually walking out in the forest should be looking at hemlock trees, learning how to identify what a hemlock is and if you start to see some diebacks and browning up at the top. If you're there after a windstorm and you pick up a branch and you see little fuzzy sacks at the base of the needles, you should be taking a picture of that and reporting it either to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency or contacting myself or the Invasive Species Centre in Sault Ste Marie, and we'll make sure that it gets reported to the right people.
Speaker 6:If you catch it early enough, there are pesticides that you can use to inoculate the tree Right now. They're the only thing that will save your tree. Otherwise the tree will die in about four to ten years depending on the location. We're now working on biocontrol in Ontario, which would be bringing in an insect from the west coast that feeds only on adelgids. There's a native adelgid on the west coast and they would feed just on those adelgids and keep the populations down. But we need those pesticides to essentially inoculate the trees right now.
Speaker 5:But we need those pesticides to essentially inoculate the trees right now. Well, in some of those things that we're bringing in, specific insects like ladybugs. I know they brought in ladybugs for certain controls and now we have a large population of ladybugs just about everywhere, which drives my mother crazy, Because in the springtime there's all kind of ladybugs in their windows, between the windows. Is this the same sort of thing? Is it a ladybug kind of thing that eats this kind of aphid-sized sort of bug?
Speaker 6:Yeah, so the hemlock woolly adelgid we have is from Japan, but there's another strain, same species but a different subspecies, that lives on the West Coast and there's a few beetles and some flies that feed exclusively on hemlock woolly adelgid and in the past some mistakes have been made around biocontrol and you bring it in and it's a generalist predator and it's probably not the best thing.
Speaker 6:But in nature there's lots of different insects that feed specifically on a plant Like hemlock woolly adelgid only feeds on hemlock. It can't survive on on anything else around here. And same with their predators. These predators, they only feed on this hemlock woolly adelgid. And so you know, you do a lot of research, you bring them in and then they start feeding on the hemlock woolly adelgid and keep the populations down. That's it's why on the West Coast they have these huge, beautiful hemlocks, they have hemlock woolly adelgid, but they have these predators that really keep the populations down and it's not a problem there. So we're just trying to introduce those here to save our hemlocks. Oh, that's a deal. Yeah, you know, hemlocks are an above average tree in terms of ecological importance, so saving them is really important for forest health Right?
Speaker 5:So you have a number. You mentioned some of these programs like the inventory program, yeah, and the biomass program. Maybe you can kind of give us some of the background on some of those programs and how can people get involved in that kind of stuff.
Speaker 6:So there has not been an inventory of private land forests since 1978 in Ontario, and even that inventory was pretty spotty. So we knew that this wasn't going to happen unless an agency took up the cause, and so that's what we did. And so there's lots of LIDAR data, remote sensing data. So planes or satellites that have flown over private land in southern Ontario, taken really detailed measurements, but that's usually been for floodplain mapping, for agriculture or urban planning, and they're not really concerned about the above ground forest portions. So we sign agreements with whoever owns that LIDAR data.
Speaker 6:We have in-house capabilities to analyze it and turn it into a forest inventory product. It and turn it into a forest inventory product. We have staff that go out and do forest inventory plots to calibrate all this data, make sure it works really well, and then we publish it online. It's an interactive map, so lots of people may be familiar with the interactive maps that are available from different public agencies. It's similar to that and you can go out and map your forest and understand the species composition, the size composition, if there's, how much carbon is in the woodlot, the various things like that.
Speaker 6:It was funded by Environment and Climate Change Canada. The online portal has not been launched yet but will be launched in the next couple of months and we have data for eastern Ontario. That's where the project has got to. We're moving east to west. Right now we have data being analyzed for the Quinte kind of Belleville area and then we'll just continue to move southwest. In the north, the Ministry of Natural Resources has that data for private land. They also have it for Crown land, but they weren't going to use any of the private land data, so they're going to provide it to us and we'll publish that online as well.
Speaker 6:So, any landowner eventually, once this project is complete, will be able to go out, find their property and, in a very detailed way, be able to map out what's there and understand a lot about their uh their property. So that's the inventory project. It's a it's a really neat project. It could be used for timber, timber uh harvesting planning, but it can also be used for wildlife management or maple syrup production planning or um understanding um other other aspects of the forest. It's a really important tool.
Speaker 5:Right, so maybe you can just elaborate on the importance of private forests and what they mean to the environment and to all our lives and everything else, and how important a role they play in everything that we do here.
Speaker 6:Yeah. So you know, on the surface one might think, well, those are private forests, only the landowner gets to enjoy them. And to a degree that might be true. But if we look across Canada, especially in the south, in Ontario, quebec, the Maritimes, british Columbia, we've got a significant amount of private land in those areas and a significant amount of private forest, especially, and the benefits that those, those private forests provide, like um viewscapes, uh, clean air, clean water, habitat recreation, um, sustainable products like timber or maple syrup, um we, we have members who make all sorts of crafts from their woodlots. Those, those benefits don't end at the border of the property, they continue well beyond. You know the stormwater attenuation, you know the flood mitigation that our private woodlots provide in those areas is pretty significant, and so we need to keep those forests healthy because we all benefit from that. And so that's really what the Woodlot Association is about is supporting those people doing that good work.
Speaker 5:So, glenn, I met Joe who is east of Oshawa here and I'd mentioned some of the things like the tax rebate and things like along that for his forested properties. But they get a concern and some individuals get very concerned that once they get involved with this that the association will control what they can do or they can't do on their property. Maybe you can kind of just kind of give some people some guidelines that it's not, no, you don't, and how does that play out for you?
Speaker 6:Yeah. So I think that's a really important point. It's one of the first things when I recommend people join the Managed Forest Tax Incentry practices, which allows you to do sustainable timber harvesting, firewood, maple syrup production, tourism, recreation, hunting, fishing, skiing, biking all those things that people like to do. You can continue to do them and you pay a lower tax. So what are the things you can't do? Well, you can't clear your forest and put up a put up a house, or if you want to do that, you just write to them and you say, like I want to carve out this area, and so you don't get the tax break on that area, but you can still do that. You can't put in an orchard or Christmas tree farm, those sort of things, but, again, if you want to do those activities, you just remove that area from the program and it's very simple to do.
Speaker 6:You don't give up any rights. You don't give up anything like that. They just want to provide you with an incentive to keep the forest as forest and as long as you do that, you get that incentive. When you decide that you don't want to do that anymore, then you can leave. In terms of the Ontario Woodlot Association, we're an entirely volunteer, member-based organization. So you buy a membership. We promote good management, we promote sustainable forestry and forest health and we expect our members to do that, but at any time you can leave the organization. We have no control really over what you do on your property. We're just trying to help you achieve your goals.
Speaker 5:Right. But the other thing is, you don't have to have a forest to be a member of your association either, do you?
Speaker 6:No, you don't yeah we have lots of members. We have people who are consultants or contractors. We have people who are just interested in the good work that we do. They enjoy private forests. Maybe they enjoy their local, municipal or conservation authority forest and they join and they support our work. We welcome them. We're not an exclusive organization.
Speaker 5:Right. So, and Glenn, how can people get in touch with you or find out more details or about these programs? And I think you had some events listed on your site. Maybe you can highlight some of the events that might be of interest to our listeners, that they can kind of participate in, and how do they get in touch with you and how do they find out about all these kinds of things?
Speaker 6:So they can go to our website ontariowoodlotcom. There's a join button that you can click to join the organization. You can look at our events calendar. Like I said, we do things like chainsaw safety, woodlot tours in your local area. We have webinars. So these invasive species that we talked about. We've run webinars on all of them to inform people about the risks and what they can do. So those are the sort of things that they can get involved with.
Speaker 6:The larger projects. They each have a section on our website. You can read more about them. Don't hesitate to contact me directly. My contact information is on the website. You can get in touch with me via email and I will get back to you. But, yeah, if you like what we do, it's $50 a year and the magazine alone is worth it. It's a wealth of information. So that's what I would suggest, and we're a very welcoming organization. Like I said, the people we work with are really kind, welcoming folks who want to help each other. So if that's the sort of group you want to be involved with, then join up.
Speaker 5:So how often does the magazine come out, Glenn?
Speaker 6:It comes out four times a year. It's about 60 to 70 pages four times a year. You can also come to our conference that's coming up in May. It includes a forest tour. It's in Kempsville this year. It includes a number of different forest tours. We're actually hosting it in conjunction with an international conference that's going on at the same time, an international forestry conference that we're actually hosting it in conjunction with uh, with an international conference that's going on at the same time, an international forestry conference that we're hosting as well. So you can go, you can actually have some time to interact and meet with some folks from all over the world who are also interested in in sustainable forest management often small, private forests and go on these really, really neat tours all over the Kempeville area and then attend the conference. So yeah, we've got. We've just got it. We've got a lot going on. There's, I would think, something for most people.
Speaker 5:It sounds like an organization that I think a lot more people would appreciate having some access to, or participating in or finding out details, because a lot of people will get these buy properties with forests. And now what do I do and how do I do it and where do I go about? And the first thing they do is they go to the local hardware store and pick up a chainsaw and then figure they're moving forward. But there are methods to ensuring good forestry practices and that's what your association promotes exactly like people.
Speaker 6:I've had new members come up to me and we're we're doing the best. We're a small but mighty group, but we we can't contact everybody all the time and we have new members that come in and say I didn't even know that I needed your help. You know it's like they. They just didn't even understand the level of complexity in managing forests and then they got involved and you know we really helped them out. And you can continue doing all the stuff you want to do, but you know you talk about picking up that chainsaw. Pick up that chainsaw and make sure you cut the right tree, like that's where we come in. You know it can make a big difference and we're quite happy to have people.
Speaker 5:Yeah, and I recall I used to say on a regular basis because I know I met with the Forest Industry Association when Jamie Lim was the president there and used to say that so long as the forest has value, it will continue to be a forest. Looking to access forests in Northern Ontario in order to clear-cut large sections, in order to promote grassland, in order to rear bee fin on community lands, on crown land, and I told her at that time, so long as the forest has value, it will continue to be a forest, otherwise they start to find other purposes for these things and your organization provides people with great recreational opportunities and a way to manage their forest that suits their needs and the forest needs as well, to the best of ability. Right.
Speaker 6:That's right. We meet people where they're at and we try to help them the best that they can so that they get the absolute most out of their forest, and we try and promote that good management and that welcoming community that people are looking for.
Speaker 5:Well, thank you very much for taking the time to be on our podcast today, glenn. We very much appreciate it. And it's just you know something a little bit more about not just under the canopy but developing that canopy so that you can do the things you love to do out there in Ontario. Thanks, thanks so much.
Speaker 6:Jerry, it was my pleasure.
Speaker 5:Yeah, thank you.
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