| Ministry of environment, man we had fun with those guys in the seventies, falling timber along a riverside and other creeks coming into it ... they started out with a nice old common sense guy for about two weeks, then sent this absolute dickhead in his place, all the rules we worked under were reversed, some in highly impractical ways, and he would whine endlessly about how little civil servants made and yes, they too pay taxes, such a hard life, bla bla bla ... and in the early days with them, there were no regs written, they basically just made up rules on the spot .... the principles are simple - you don't want to disturb spawning channels in spawning season ever, you don't want to make the water brown ever and especially in spawning season, you don't want an excess of organic material in the water, especially fine stuff like sawdust, because it depletes oxygen for the fry ... at the same time, shelter along creek banks gives the fry protection, so windfalls and other appropriate debris serve a purpose, loggers by the mid-seventies understood this stuff pretty good, and there were no abuses in the camps i was in then [in some others, yes] ... well this guy would say one thing to one of us, then the complete opposite to another ... or to the same guy, a day later, he'd say do it this way and only this way, you'd sigh and do it that way, he'd come next day and say that's wrong ... meantime we're jacking six-foot spruce against heavy lean, pulling some with an old D8 but you couldn't get it into all the corners ... this guy was amazing, the prissy little narrow mind and the mannerisms combined were funny even at the time ... then one day he was gone, they'd sent a young fellow straight out of university, complete with written regs as to how things should, nay must, be done ... some of it made no sense whatsoever, young fellow could clearly see this and understood, so he would say 'let's interpret it this other practical way' - perfect, a reasonable man, i bet it wasn't long before he had a better job than working for that outfit |
