This page has been set up to share photos & video relating to the "Behaviour & Attitudes" chapter of "Step By Step, A Tree Planter's Handbook." Visit www.replant.ca/books to see books about tree planting.
Forest fires are a major concern for any forester. Most foresters prohibit smoking within a cutblock, and mandate that plantes always stand on a bare road when smoking.
A wildfire can destroy peoples' homes, jobs, and recreational opportunities.
Wildfires destroy animals and their habitat.
The best way to minimize losses from wildfires is from prevention. Be proactive, rather than reactive.
Make sure your vehicle has a spill kit, in case any sort of hazardous material is spilled into the environment. Leaks from vehicles (oil, fuel, antifreeze, brake fluid, etc.) can often be cleaned up quickly with a spill kit.
Keeping your vehicle in good working order, with regular inspections, will help prevent environmental contamination in the first place.
If you find garbage in your cutblocks, left behind by a disrespectful public, it doesn't hurt to take it to a landfill with the rest of your garbage. Always bring all of your garbage out of a block.
If animals associate humans with food, they can become a problem, and may have to be destroyed. Don't leave food in your tent!
Always be on time for meetings, and for when your truck needs to depart in the morning. If you're ten minutes late, and there are seven other planters on the crew, you've just wasted more than an hour of everyone's combined time. Would you be happy if someone cost you an hour of planting? Probably not, so make sure you don't cause down time for other planters.
Your foreman is probably extremely busy most of the time. Taking just a few seconds to break down your boxes and leaving your cache tidy is probably a huge help to him or her.
Using an empty box as a garbage box keeps bundle wrappers and other unnecessary plastic from blowing around and making a mess at your cache.
Everyone has errands that need to be done during a short time frame on the day off. Be organized, and don't be late when the trucks are getting ready to return to camp.
If you see a new planter that is having difficulties, offer them advice or assistance. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Similarly, anything that you do to help an individual on your crew has a way of benefitting everyone on the crew.
Bullying is inappropriate behaviour, whether it is in the workplace, or related to the workplace.
The Charter of Rights and Freedoms prohibits discrimination of all types.
Most planters learn to co-exist happily.
Although planting was once a male-dominated industry, the proportion of women in the workforce has been increasingly slowly.
Although the industry has some women in management, further improvements are possible.
Discrimination, bullying, harassment: These are all behaviours to avoid.
Harassment can be grounds for dismissal.
Stashing is inappropriate, immoral, and dishonest. Planting companies and foresters do regular audits to minimize the possibility of stashed trees.
The widespread prevalence of GPS devices and apps such as Avenza make it very easy to calculate the size of a planter's piece. This can be compared with the claimed tallies and plots taken in the piece, to see if the tallies make sense.
Supervisors and foresters do significant statistical analysis on every block, and if the numbers are off by even a small amount, the statistical analysis will show the discrepancies and further investigation will be carried out.
If you're caught or suspected of stashing, your employment will be terminated.
The risks of stashing are not worth it.
Click here to see a page listing books related to reforestation in Canada. If you received a photocopied version of this book from your planting company, or you're a trainer at a Canadian planting company, click on this link for more information.
