Musason Canada Limited - musason.canada@gmail.com

Silvicultural contractors provide a variety of woodlot management services, not just harvesting. These can include selection harvesting, thinning, road building, wildlife management, management planning, boundary line work, and many others.

Pruning is a minimally invasive method of improving the quality of crop trees in a stand. Lower limbs are removed manually from selected trees to decrease problematic knots in the lumber and make them easier to harvest later on.

Precommercial thinning (PCT) is done in overstocked stands of younger trees to free up space and resources for selected trees and improve overall stand quality. PCT treatments are done in both natural stands and plantations. The goal is to remove less desirable trees (like non-crop species, or damaged and diseased trees) as well as create appropriate spacing in the stand for healthy, higher quality trees to grow. PCT work is generally done manually with clearing or thinning saws.

In stands where natural regeneration is lacking, it is often advantageous to plant seedlings. This can be done after both even-aged management treatments (like clearcutting) and uneven-aged management treatments (like selective cutting). Desirable species are planted at specified intervals to fill in the gaps in forest vegetation and provide a continuous forest cover. Both softwood and hardwood species can be planted.

Herbicides are a type of pesticide that are sometimes used in the forest industry to control, discourage or kill unwanted or competing plant species in certain kinds of stands and treatments. Forest contractors are hired to apply these chemicals. In many areas, approval is required by the provincial Activities Designation Regulations under the Environment Act before any pesticides (and thus herbicides) can be applied.

The term pesticide covers a wide range of substances used for controlling, discouraging or destroying problem pest populations. These include insecticides, herbicides, and fungicides. Forest contractors are sometimes hired to apply these chemicals to stands in order to limit the growth of or kill undesirable flora or fauna. In many areas, approval is required by the provincial Activities Designation Regulations under the Environment Act before any pesticides can be applied.

This treatment is used to promote the growth of desirable crop trees. The trees around selected crop trees are thinned out to allow the more desirable trees more space and nutrients, which in turn can increase the health and future value of the stand.