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| November 2000 |
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Forestry training in Bottle Lake Forest Park For just over a year Bottle Lake Forest Park has been the venue for a successful practical forestry silviculture training programme. Christchurch Forestry Training Centre, which is run by the Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology, has had the support of the City Council to provide forestry silviculture training for young people in the region. Twenty-five students have gone through the programme to date and of those, each has been offered employment as a result of the programme. The course is based in the park and started off using the old sawmill site office, located near the carpark. Due to expansion of the programme, the Council has agreed that the training programme move into one of the other buildings that has been used intermittently for school visits and other functions by ranger staff. Another useful side of having the programme in Bottle Lake was that in the October storm, students from the programme were available to quickly go and clear the tracks in the park to allow recreation to continue. John Heath, head tutor of Christchurch Forestry Training Centre, says "the venue for our forestry programmes is ideal because it gives students exposure to a production forest from day one". "There has been excellent support from city councillors and staff and that is much appreciated." The programme was initiated by local forest industry contractors, who identified a lack of skilled people needed for the growing amount of work forecast for silviculture. Projections for the next few years in pruning and tending trees in Canterbury are quite high. Also, the programme lends itself to students moving from silviculture into forest harvesting. |
