Features Harvesting Transportation
Live ‘In the Woods’ Show Offers Educational Opportunity

Over 4,000 people attended the live “In the Woods” show put on by the Pacific Logging Congress (PLC) in late September. The 3.5-day event was held on Longview Timber Company’s Nehalem Tree Farm near Clatskanie, Ore.

“We were pleased with the turnout, especially the number of students and teachers that attended the event,” says Rikki Wellman, the PLC’s executive director and one of the main organizers of the show. “We view the show as a great way to promote the forest industry and to educate kids and their teachers about logging and the job opportunities that are available in our industry.”

Wellman says the “In the Woods” show is meant to be “65% education and 35% sales and marketing,” adding, “Our mandate is to provide sound technical information about the forest industry. If our industry is going to survive, we must educate our youth.”

About half of the 4,000 attendees were school children, teachers and parents of the attending students. The balance of the attendees were logging industry staff who were looking at new equipment and techniques and loggers who were earning Pro Logger Credits by attending educational events.

“Overall, we thought the show was upbeat,” adds Wellman. “We have already had a couple of years of doom and gloom and everyone seemed to be looking for the positive. We have had good feedback from our exhibitors and some of the meetings between equipment manufacturers and loggers have already resulted in sales.”

There were a total of 47 exhibitors this year, including 16 main tent exhibitors, 13 active exhibitors that did live demos, and 18 static sites.

One evening during the show, the Pacific Forest Foundation, which is the education wing of the Pacific Logging Congress, held a fundraiser barbeque that brought in $37,000 that will be used to fund on-going educational promotion, including the award winning “This is my Office” online recruitment website and video, which is designed to attract young people to the forest industry.

For more information, visit www.pacificloggingcongress.com or www.pacificforestfoundation.org. In addition to educational and other promotional materials on the sites, you will find a link to a YouTube video highlighting what some visiting kids had to say about the recent show.