Horse-logging project underway in PEI forests

(Dundas, PEI)Way down along a snow-covered logging road near Dundas, (Prince Edward Island_ two horses and a sleigh pull three generations of Taylor men through narrow pathways in the woods.

The men pick through a four-acre area of Crown land, choosing dead or crooked trees in the stand for firewood. Their chainsaws mark the only sound of machinery for miles as they slice through the trunks of their handpicked trees.

After amassing a pile of logs, the three men work together to pile them onto the sleigh pulled by two young Heflinger ponies, Morgan and Minnie.

Their hooves sink into the deep snow that a recent rainfall has made soft as they pull their load to another larger log pile. It would have been easier going on this day had the snow been a little more firm.

But the ponies have become accustomed to their work in the forest, and only fidgeted slightly as they waited for the wood to be piled onto the larger mass of logs a few feet away. All the freshly cut trees will eventually make their way out of the thicket in small trips on the sleigh to the main logging road about 10 minutes away.

The men thoroughly enjoy their work in the provincially-owned woodland, even if the work is a little old-fashioned. Its a heartier workload to use a horse in lieu of a tractor and the modern heavy-machinery equipment usual for logging, but they prefer it for this smaller venture.

This is the way it was always donewe just got away from it, Kevin Taylor said as he threw another log onto the pile.

We have the horses anyway and the best thing to do with a horse if you have them is use them.

Taylor was awarded the tender for the St. Georges property after the provincial forests program issued a public tender late last year to gauge interest in horse logging.

The Department of Energy and Forestry is overseeing the special horse logging project that officials hope to expand to other Crown land properties.

Taylor spends six to seven hours in the woods daily, alongside his father and his son who help him choose the trees they will use for firewood and small-dimension lumber.

By removing the old, poorly formed and dead trees from the stand, theyre helping to improve the overall health and quality of the forest, says provincial eastern district forest supervisor Reg Conohan.

Theyre going in and trying to create a few small openings and take out the poorest quality trees, and at the same time leave some quality and create some openings so that we can get some higher quality trees established, he said.

Trees that reach a higher market value on PEI, such as sugar maple, yellow birch and white pine, need a diffused light to thrive, Conohan explained.

When a forest area is clear-cut, it creates open spaces and an oversaturated light. When this happens, lower-grade, or pioneer trees such as poplar grow quickly in this direct light and often choke out higher quality trees.

Forestry is an important industry to the Island and clear-cutting is sometimes necessary, Conohan said.

But small-scale operations such as Taylors are very healthy for forest maintenance.

What we hope to establish in here is a series of unevenly aged trees. Itll be constantly an ongoing process where you go in and take out older trees and give room for new ones to establish, he said. So its kind of a give and take type of thing. Its part of the management cycle.

And using horses in the winter forest also keeps the wood intact.

When you come in here in the spring, youd never know there was anything in there, like you would if there had been a tractor, Taylor said. There wont be a mark in the woods.

His father, Glen Taylor, remembers the days when horse and sleigh teams were all that PEI loggers ever used.

Things were different back then, he said.

When I was in the woods with my grandfather and my father, youd never clear cut. And I remember if you fell a tree into a bunch of small stuff and broke it down, you heard about it, Glen said.

I love the woods, the outdoors. Now I do because I like it, but back then I did it because I had to make a living.

The horse-logging project should take about 10 weeks to complete, depending on the weather.

Once the snow clears in the spring, provincial forests staff will complete an on-site evaluation to see how well the project worked.

(This article was originally published in The Guardian.)