Chilcotin Forest District Engineering Program

The Chilcotin Forest District has an extensive road network totaling over 9000 kms, not including roads under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Transportation and Highways. The District road inventory consists of approximately 1800 kms of Forest Service Roads (FSRs), 2800 kms of Road Permit (RP) roads and 4500-plus kms of “non-status”roads. There are 36 bridges or major structures on the FSRs with the largest being a 50 meter span over the Chilko River at Henry’s Crossing. Forest licensees have about three times as many bridges/large structures on their “Road Permit” roads. There are also 20 Special Use Permits for gravel pits on FSRs and RPs.

While forest licensees have Road Use Permits and maintain much of the FSR network the district does maintain all access to recreation sites and is responsible for maintenance, including snow plowing on several FSRs that have year-round residences.

Photo credits: Brian Bentley

Rob Haley, Engineering Officer
Rob donates a lot of his personal time to flooding and clearing our excellant outdoor skating rink. Way to go, Rob! The rink is located near the MOFR office at the Alexis Creek Community Club Grounds.

Photo credit - Dan Hicks

Anna Brace

Anna Brace worked in the Chilcotin Forest District Engineering Department from April 30 to August 31, 2007. Her work term was a Co-op student employment opportunity arranged by the Ministry of Forests and Range (MFR) and Thompson Rivers University.
Anna is a quick study and, as anticipated, her computer skills, GPS experience and outdoors background proved to be a perfect fit for the projects she was tasked to complete. The main project she worked on was field data-collection and GPS-inventory of features and structures along the Chilcotin Forest District Forest Service Road (FSR) network. This involved travelling over 10 000 kms in order to inspect several hundred kilometres of FSRs. Anna also assisted the Stewardship department in the field on occasion.
The forest road data collection involved inspecting, measuring and then entering road features, structures and corresponding GPS coordinates into a laptop computer while in the field. Once back in the office, Anna would download the data into the Forest Road Management Application (FRMA) data base. FRMA is an important mapping and database tool used for the management of forest roads and resources. As a relatively new program, FRMA required substantial field work to populate the inventory fields plus correct many mapping problems. Anna not only completed a large amount of field work but did much toward getting the FRMA database operational in terms of data cleanup and coordinating map fixes with the MFR Geomatics department.
The field work occasionally involved ATV use and Anna got lots of experience towing ATV trailers as well as the culvert trailer.
It was a productive summer for the engineering department an the entire office would love to see Anna return for another term or two!

Photo credit: Rob Haley

Links

• Equipment Registration site
• Provincial Engineering Homepage

Photos

Sapeye Recreation Site
Photo credits: Brian Bentley