Junior Forest Wardens wind up another great year

The Meadow Lake “Woodlanders” Junior Forest Wardens annual windup meeting was held June 13^th at Pagan Lake. Club executive, leaders and key events are all in place for September and we are looking forward to another year of hands-on outdoor learning. Here are some highlights of the year just ended:

June 2011 saw about 650 JFW members from BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland gather at Hinton for a week-long National Camp. This event is held every 3 or 4 years and features a huge variety of instructional sessions on anything you can imagine to do with wilderness skills, leadership, ecology, forestry, wildlife, traditional crafts, music, canoing, team challenges... the list goes on! The next one will be in 2014, possibly in Saskatchewan if a suitable sitecan be found.

September featured a family camp at Matheson Lake in the Meadow Lake Provincial Park, which included hikes, canoing and of course lots of good food. Several new families joined our club this year.

October featured a series of club meetings focused on Disaster Preparedness. Given the last summer's events in Slave Lake and other places, there was keen interest in learning how to be better prepared for all sorts of possible events. Every year in October, JFW volunteers meet for a weekend of leader development. This year's event was held at the Long Lake JFW camp near Athabasca.

November and December were difficult weather-wise, but we managed a nature hike at the St Cyr ski trails, practiced shelter-building and had a Christmas skating & hayride party.

January and February 2012 included cross-country ski lessons, our 'Sprucewood Derby' and some hands-on projects like building tin-can pressure stoves and repairing Coleman lamps and stoves. Adventurous wardens got to go on a weekend bush camp and learn winter survival skills. Conservation Officer Dan Robinson came for an afternoon to challenge everyone's fire-lighting abilities.

March saw one of the highlights of the year, our annual winter camp which was held this year at Camp Oshkidee on Jeanette Lake. There wasn't much winter, though! All thoughts of skiing and snowshoing were set aside and we had tons of fun with orienteering, skills challenges and team-building games. Ken Ness from Saskatchewan Environment gave a fantastic presentation on the work of conservation officers and wildland fire investigators.

May's big event was our annual “Spring Fling” family camp which was held once again at Matheson Lake. We were joined by JFW members from Airdrie and Onoway. The weekend program included photography lessons, sailing lessons, a forest-fire regeneration hike, a huge potluck supper and entertaining evening campfire program and other events.

June gets busy with soccer and other demands on everyone's time, but we did manage to get in lots of JFW time too. We finished up the shelter at our in-town club site, which is where we hold many of our evening meetings in the fall and spring. Our wind-up meeting began with a work bee: last summer’s storms did considerable damage to our interpretive trail at Pagan Lake, with tree trunks laying across the walkway, and information signs lost in the debris or destroyed altogether. Several hours with chainsaws, pruning sheers and axes made the path accessible again. Hopefully, over the next few months we'll get new signs made and installed. We also installed numerous nesting boxes and finished the evening with campfire supper and annual general meeting.

Junior Forest Wardens is an exciting and educational opportunity for young people and their families to have fun, develop skills, and get educated in the many and diverse aspects of our natural environment. For more information about our club or one in your area please visit www.jfwa.ca. Interested in starting your own local club in Saskatchewan? Contact info@woodlandersjfw.org!