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The BC Safe Silviculture Project covers the WorkSafeBC classification units including tree planting and cone picking, mechanical weeding and spacing, chemical weeding and spacing and wildfire fighting.
The Western Silvicultural Contractors’ Association has a three-year contract with the BC Forest Safety Council to design and deliver the Project in accordance with the BC Forest Safety Accord and the goals of the Council.
There are an estimated 6,000 seasonal silviculture workers in British Columbia. Their ranks include tree planters, cone pickers, mechanical and cehemical brushers, weeders and tree spacers, wildfire fighters and prescribed burn crews. The majority of them are young workers between the ages of 15 and 24, active primarily in the B.C. Interior spring and summer planting season. Many of them pay their way through college and university planting and brushing trees. However, there is a significant number of veteran career silviculture workers who work through the full calendar by following various forestry activities across the province. Most silviculture workers come from B.C.
The entrepreneurial community of contractors who direct these workers includes approximately 600 firms. The majority of them are small businesses based throughout the province. The Western Silvicultural Contractors Association (WSCA), whose members account for the majority of the silviculture work in the province, represents the silviculture contractors.
Given its size and seasonal activity the silviculture has a disproportionately high injury claim rate. The work is demanding. Most payment is based on a piece work rate. Workers ask a lot of themselves to earn the premium wages they expect for this kind of labour. Contractors rely on this elite workforce to maintain high production levels to achieve major planting and forest tending goals over short periods of time.
Fortunately the majority of silviculture injuries result from overuse and are not considered severe. But they are persistent, expensive and discouraging to workers and contractors. Injuries related to silviculture power saw work are often more harmful and occur at a noticeably higher rate relative to the rest of the forest industry.
Although incidents are rare, silviculture workers are vulnerable to some tragic injuries and fatalities due to transportation collisions, including light trucks, vans and all terrain vehicles, as well as wildlife attacks.
Recent demographic studies show the silviculture sector is growing younger each year. Young workers as a cohort are statistically more prone to workplace injuries than the rest of the provincial workforce. In the silviculture sector with its already higher rates of injuries the potential outcomes of these two combined trends will need to be off set by better supervision and training and an overall increase in the level of health and safety professionalism of the contractor community.
In 2003 the WSCA conducted a silviculture sector safety needs analysis under the aegis of the then Forest Industry Safety Association. The study identified injury trends and recommended strategies to reduce the industry’s high injury rates. It proposed ways to improve the overall wellness of workers and the safety performance of their employers. (provide link) The needs analysis also gathered a comprehensive health and safety literature review and best practices summary relevant to the B.C. Silviculture sector.
Following its formation in 2004 the BC Forest Safety Council agreed to support the continuation of the ongoing silviculture safety initiatives in collaboration with the WSCA. The Western Silvicultural Contractors’ Association then signed a three-year contract with the Council including funding to design and deliver the B.C. Safe Silviculture Project in accordance with the BC Forest Safety Accord and the goals of the Council. The WSCA is a founding member association of the BC Forest Safety Council and besides sitting as a director on its Board it is active on many of its strategic committees.
The B.C. Safe Silviculture Project is guided by its Strategic Advisory Committee (SAC), an advisory sub-committee of the WSCA Board of Directors. The SAC comprises silviculture contractors, silviculture workers, WorkSafeBC representation, a member of the general public and Council representatives. In concert with the Council SAC’s prime function is to review and update the Project and produce its annual workplan.
Few studies have concentrated on profiling the B.C. silviculture industry from a health and safety perspective. The original 2003 FISA silviculture sector needs analysis provided the first summaries of injury trends across the sector. These lagging indicators, the outcomes of past health and safety practices and behaviours, are essential to framing an initial health and safety portrait of the industry. But at the same time leading indicators—things like the sector’s attitudes towards health and safety and the levels of safety education that determine the practices and behaviours—need to be measured as well. These implicit characteristics are often the human factors of health and safety and probably the most critical to monitoring and changing if the Project is to succeed in making the sector more safe and well.
Both leading and lagging indicators are being gathered initially as part of the B.C. Safe Silviculture Project baseline study. The baseline study will be instrumental in directing the Project as well as a benchmark to measure its accomplishments over time.
Uncertainty about the possible health effects on tree planters from handling fertilizers while planting as well as exposures to nursery residues on seedlings has dogged the sector for years. This year a study is underway to build on existing research as well as fill in some of the investigative gaps on this topic. The ongoing investigations contained in the BC Safe Silviculture Project’s Occupational Exposures to Fertilizer and Contaminants in BC Tree Planters are jointly funded by WorkSafeBC and the BC Safe Silviculture Project in collaboration with Forest Engineering Research Institute of Canada (FERIC) and the School of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene, University of British Columbia. A final report is expected in the fall.
Besides developing sector-specific training the B.C. Safe Silviculture Project is working on industry recognized practices (IRPs) for silviculture. These IRPs are expected to become requirements of silviculture company health and safety plans and practices. They include:
- Remote camp emergency preparedness, evacuation and mutual aid.
- Wildlife risk reduction. See; www.bearsmart.com
- Health and wellness materials on nutrition, hydration, fitness and injury prevention for silviculture workers. See; www.selkirk.ca/treeplanting
- Guidelines for silviculture health and safety plans and joint health and safety committees.
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