SAWPOINTS
India’s top foresters visit Lochaber to see restoration progress
S
ome of India’s most senior forestry experts visited Forestry Commission
Scotland’s Lochaber District recently to see first hand the results of the local team’s landscape restoration work. The five-strong group, led by Dr PJ Dilip Kumar of the Government of India’s Ministry of Environment and Forests, included the Principals of India’s various forest institutes. “Our Environment Manager, Ken Knott, was in India earlier this year to advise on local landscape restoration projects, and this is the second visit that the Indian
foresters have made here,” the Commission’s District Manager, Kevin Peace, said. “We must be doing something right because we seem to have generated quite a bit of interest both here and abroad. “A lot of people have been
involved in managing and developing the assets we have here, as well as in refining the expertise that we have built up over the years so it’s great for everyone to see their hard work being recognised at an international level.” The visitors’ two day trip to
Lochaber, which followed official
talks in London and Edinburgh, included a tour of forest landscapes around the Great Glen and some guided exploration of native woodlands, particularly the Garry Pinewood. The Indian forestry experts are keen to work with the Commission to refine the shared knowledge in landscape restoration to incorporate entire ecosystems. “Restoration of forest landscapes is about creating a mosaic that satisfies many objectives, from timber to wildlife,” Environment Manager Kenneth Knott said. “The Garry hills
Bandit snags green gong
Wood chipper manufacturer Bandit Industries received a National Partnership for Environmental Priorities (NPEP) achievement award from the Environmental Protection Agency in September. The award was given to the company for efforts in reducing hazardous chemicals in the workplace, specifically with the reduction of mercury. Bandit was one of only three organisations in Michigan to receive the award. “We established a goal to
reduce our mercury use throughout our buildings,” Bandit Industries Facilities Manager Louie
Jensen said. “We focused on thermostats, which often contain minute amounts of mercury. With over 65 furnaces throughout our buildings the project seemed overwhelming at first, but we put together a plan and over the course of two months replaced all the thermostats with new programmable units that were mercury free.” Bandit’s proactive replacement of these thermostats resulted in about three pounds of the dangerous metal being removed from the company grounds. The old thermostats were then securely packaged and sent to a
recycling facility. “Three pounds may not sound like much, but even the tiny amounts found in a basic household fever thermometer can result in a very hazardous chemical spill,” EPA Region Five Waste Minimisation Coordinator, Janet Haff, said. “Bandit is really ahead of the curve on chemical reductions.” These reductions were achieved
as part of the NPEP program, a voluntary reduction program in which companies, municipalities, federal facilities and tribes partner with the EPA to reduce and/or recycle toxic chemicals. The NPEP program also works to identify environmentally preferable alternatives and fosters technology transfer. In Bandit’s case, switching to mercury-free programmable thermostats also came with a welcome side effect. “With our new thermostats we saw a 30% reduction in our heating bill from the previous winter,” Jensen said. “We double and triple-checked our figures after seeing that, but everything lined up. We’re tenfold over the cost of the installation just in energy savings, all from simply
8 International Forest Industries | OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2011
replacing thermostats.” Haff presented the award to Bandit at the company’s global headquarters in Remus, Michigan. Receiving the award was Jensen along with Bandit Co-owner Dianne Morey, Human Resources Generalist Kelly Zielinski, Industrial Technician Lee Hohlbein and Maintenance Assistant Terry Howard. “Louie, Lee and Terry have been phenomenal in this effort,” Haff said. “On behalf of the EPA we congratulate them and all of Bandit for their achievements in the NPEP program.” To date, NPEP partners have been successful in removing more than 40 million lbs of potentially hazardous material. “Bandit Industries has demonstrated that chemical management can improve an organisation's environmental and economic performance,” Haff said. “The goal also helped to raise awareness regarding the dangers of mercury to both human health and the environment.”
Indian forestry visitors
complex has many native woodland remnants as well as key species such as black grouse. A project that could link the native woodland remnants and enhance the area for black grouse and other species would be a great project to get involved in.
“In fact, with some of the montane woodland species present, it would be a real landscape-scale project to restore a woodland mosaic from loch to hilltop.”
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