A harvester cuts & processes timber on the site at Demo 2000

Live demonstrations of cable logging, short-wood harvesting and conventional logging helped draw more than 7,000 visitors to Demo 2000 in the heart of the Okanagan in September.

Short-wood harvesting is done by a machine that not only falls a tree but also cuts off its limbs and chops it into prescribed lengths, slightly more than 16 feet or 8 feet long.

Manufacturers demonstrated machinery worth more than $150 million at this year’s version of the largest forestry equipment trade show in North America, which is staged every four years.

Visitors from Brazil, Australia, China, Scandinavia and elsewhere came to see the newest in technology, machinery, and forest-management practices at the three-day event hosted by Kelowna-based Riverside Forest Products.

About 100 exhibitors operated hundreds of woodland machines on a site of about 200 hectares around Bear Lake, on Riverside’s Tree Farm Licence 49, about 40 kilometres from Kelowna.

Now-retired Penticton District Operations Manager John Griffin and his team began planning the Forest Service’s activities in the spring of 1999.

"It was like an equipment Olympics," said Mike Jobke, Major Tenures Forester for the Penticton forest district, who took over the Demo project after John retired.

The Penticton office showed how companies can harvest within a lakeshore management zone, logging an area beside Bear Lake without compromising sight lines for recreational users.

"We developed three recreation sites and an interpretive trail, demonstrating a full range of management techniques on our site," Mike said.

The Protection Branch demonstrated fire-fighting techniques including fire-fighters rappelling from a helicopter to extinguish a blaze on an island in the middle of Bear Lake.

Ministry specialists created a visual landscape presentation that showed a harvesting plan for the south slope of Bear Lake covering a 100-year time-span. Victoria-based Forest Service staff exhibited high-tech wood-production forecasts, partial cutting techniques, and Forest Renewal B.C. highlights. And retired Forintek employee Les Jozsa demonstrated his woodcarving skills and his expansive knowledge of wood products.

Demo will be held next in Quebec in 2004 and return to B.C. in 2008.