Spring, 1999

How time flies. After a busy summer I’m sure that everyone was looking forward to a slow Fall, but before we knew it was December. The Fall and Winter season for RMS got off to a great start with the Fall meeting at Whitecourt. The Technical Session was entitled "After the Fire is Out". The presentations and the field trip were first-class thanks to the speakers and the Program Committee. It was good to see a large student contingent from the University. The Winter Technical Session was held in Calgary and the Spring Session will be held in Edmonton on March 26, 1999.

In order for the CIF to remain strong and active we need to insure that we recruit new members. With this in mind, the RMS executive has undertaken a new initiative to attract student members. Sarah Gooding and I visited first and second year classes at the University in November and gave a brief presentation on the CIF, its aims, and benefits of membership. For many of the students it was their first exposure to the CIF and judging from the number of information packages that we gave out there is a lot of interest in it. We hope to visit the first year technologist class at NAIT in the new year. The Executive has also agreed to sponsor two students from the University and two students from NAIT to attend the national CIF meeting in Banff next fall. A competition will be held this winter to determine the student attendees.

Through the "grapevine" I have learned that there is some concern from the membership about the lack of "Member News" from RMS in the Forestry Chronicle. If members have news items that they would like to see printed the Forestry Chronicle or posted on the web site please let me or someone else on the Executive know and we will try to help.