Author: Stacy White
Planning Unit: Whitley County CES
Major Program: Logging Training and Professional Education
Plan of Work: Focus on Forestry, Wildlife, and Natural Resource Management
Outcome: Long-Term Outcome
On February 6th, 2018 UK Forestry Extensionbroadcast a live Logger Web TV Program to 25 counties strategically distributedaround the state, from the Webcast studio in the Forestry Extension Office.Assistance from the county agents and supporting staff was critical to thesuccess of this program. Counties opened their offices up, assisted withregistration, answering and conveying questions, and much more. By hosting thisLogger TV program from our webcast studio in the format that we did, we wereable to provide quality programing to 492 Kentucky Master Loggers (KML) inconvenient locations around the state and by doing so alleviated overcrowdingpressure on in person classes, in this big renewal year. A follow up of loggersdemonstrated that many loggers saw a direct cost savings and convenience fromhaving classes available closer to home and several counties even provided alunch at no additional cost to attendees. A program of this scale took moretime in planning and coordination on the front end, but allowed for efficiencyby being able to effectively reach about 1/5 of the KML community at one time.On average, KML attendees reported a travel time savings of 2 1/2 hourscompared to normal KML program attendance and a fuel savings of $32 per logger(the high being $135 in fuel saved). Fuel savings alone allowed for anapproximate cost savings of $15,744 for the 492 KML attendees of the LoggerWebTV Program, not including travel time, hotel, or lunches provided cordiallyby county extension offices. The Bell and Knox County ANR agents cooperated to host this program at the Knox County CES office and were able to train 22 MasterLoggers.
Segments of the training included market updates, newindustry market locations, Kentucky forest industry economic update, ash loss,ambrosia beetle devaluation of ash, endangered bat update, endangered KY arrowdarter update, hardwood log export update, best management practice inspectionsfrom the director of the Kentucky Division of Forestry, basics of a mechanizedlogging operation, the verso mill closure and its effects on the forest andlogging firms, new website apps that can help logging operations in estimatingcost of operation, get access to locations of emergency services, and determineif they are operating in a federally protected waterway, and many more topicsand interviews. Feedback was very positive to the variety of topics andinformation provided. Attendees of the day long Logger WebTV program received 6CEU hours, which they are required by state law to obtain every 3 years torecertify their Master Logger designation.
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