Norm Mittelstadt

Norm’s forestry career started when he attended and completed the NAIT Forest Technology program in 1990-1992. He worked the summers of 1990 and 1991 in Rocky Mountain House, on the Forest firefighting crews. The summers of 1992 and 1993 he worked at the Edson Air tanker Base, loading planes with fire retardant for fighting Forest fires.

In the fall of 1993, he started working at Rocky Wood Preservers, which was a family run sawmill in Rocky Mountain House. He had worked at various jobs in the mill, which eventually led him to use his forestry skills learned at NAIT. He started off by doing block layout, road layout and regeneration surveys. Eventually he was given the tasks of completing silvicultural prescriptions, planting supervision, creating harvest design plans and scaling timber, plus whatever else was thrown his way. He worked there until the fall of 2015 when the mill shut down. While there he also obtained his Dozer Boss certificate, which allows him to lead a group of dozers on the fire line.

Norm started working as a crew member with Tall Timber Resources Inc in the fall of 2016. Work included measurement of Temporary Sample Plots, Permanent Sample Plots and Regenerated Lodgepole Pine plots. As time progressed, he became a crew leader, then now a field supervisor. He is responsible for training new hires in the field, where he can pass on his years of experience to the junior staff. Other projects that he has taken on are block and road layout, Establishment and Performance surveys, erosion control on roads and watersheds, setting up and measuring Regenerated Gain Trial plots, rare Pine assessments for rare pines in BC for pipeline construction.