They’re, “larger than life characters” and “members of logging families who go back to a time” when the region was settled. They spend their days “among the towering trees and powerful machines.” They work in “relentless weather,” “working every day to retrieve the timber with which we build our country.”
North Notes
TV Loggers Not Reality
2009 Great Lakes Region Logger of the Year Dave Berthiaume (right) takes time to host an industry/agency tour on one of his logging sites to discuss biomass harvesting impacts and implications. Members of Minnesota’s logging community routinely take the time to educate others on the importance of proper forest management and proper timber harvesting techniques. | TPA
Those are the words used to promote the reality cable TV show “Ax Men,” but they could also be used to describe the loggers right here in Minnesota—men like David Berthiaume of Cloquet, named Logger of the Year in Minnesota and the Outstanding Logger in the Lake States Region in 2009.
Yet Minnesota loggers bear little resemblance to those portrayed in the Ax Men program or in other shows like it, where loggers regularly use foul language, appear to have little regard for the safety of their crews or equipment, and don’t seem concerned with soils, water quality, wildlife or other considerations in a healthy forest.
Loggers in the state of Minnesota are unique because they operate under guidelines developed by the Minnesota Forest Resource Council. The MFRC was established in 1995 to promote long-term sustainable management of Minnesota’s forests, and the guidelines they created to help reduce the potential for negative environmental impact from forest harvesting and other forest-management activities on all forestlands in the state. They address the management, use and protection of historic and cultural resources, riparian areas, soil productivity, water quality and wetlands, wildlife habitat, and visual quality.
Roughly 50 loggers around the state have taken this ideal of proper forest management to a higher level by earning Minnesota Master Logger Certification. The certification provides customers and the general public assurances that the person or company performing the logging job has the education, training, and experience to do the job correctly. Master Logger Certification is most often pursued by logging companies that take their wood to mills where the customers demand products made from sustainably managed forests.
