Spray Lake Sawmills (SLS) takes its role as ‘stewards of the forest’ to heart.
As a member of the Alberta Forest Products Association, SLS is committed to practicing sound forest management practices — from harvesting and processing to conservation and reforestation.
“When we harvest a tree, we do something called ‘stump side processing’,” explained Ed Kulcsar, woodlands manager. “It costs us a little bit more up front to do that, but there’s a lot of environmental and ecological benefits to doing it that way. In terms of the sustainability – the reforestation component – there’s benefits there, as well.”
Traditional logging practices meant hauling the trees to the roadside, where the limbs and tops were taken off at roadside and burnt. While this remains to be practice for some logging companies in the province, Kulcsar explained that for environmental reasons, SLS logging practices take the limbs and tops off the trees while they are still in their blocks. Then, the remainder of the tree is brought roadside for loading and hauling.
“The reason for keeping the limbs and tops out there (in their original location) is so that the needles break down and help with nutrient recycling to return these nutrients back to the soil. It keeps the seed on site, so that when the cones open, all this natural seed is there on site to help with the reforestation.”
Kulcsar added that people initially look at this process as messy, but the environmental benefits are tremendous – even for creating debris for small mammals.
Timber is harvested by SLS from west of Sundre, along the band of forestry reserve that runs south of the Crowsnest Pass.
SLS replants two million trees annually. Each year, roughly one-1.5 million trees are harvested (harvesting is tracked more accurately by volume, not by tree number).
With respect to the harvest planning and operations, Kulcsar stressed that consideration of how the habitat and wildlife species will be affected and maintained is a top priority for SLS.
