Surviving the Summer: Forests Ontario Survival Assessors Help Landowners Achieve Forest Heath

Over the summer, Rainer Dinkelmann took a job with Forests Ontario as one of two Planting and Habitat Assessors. Along with his colleague, Shaun Devlin, he conducted survival assessments for landowners who had planted trees under our flagship 50 Million Tree Program. In total, they conducted assessments on about 350,000 trees.

Survival assessments have many purposes. They allow us to monitor planting success and tree growth, and they give us an opportunity to make recommendations to landowners who are experiencing challenges such as invasive species.

By taking an active approach to managing survival, we help landowners to ensure that their plantations will grow into healthy and diverse forests over time. Hardy plantations can survive the winter elements and additional stressors, such as drought conditions. Challenges to plantations are more easily managed if caught early.

Rainer took samples of trees and notes on important site factors such as soil conditions and competition between plant species.

For all of his professionalism, the job was not without adventure. At times, he had to travel through dense forest. He recalls one plantation in particular – Red Pine – that was so dense that he had crouch down to half his height just to be able to get through.

While in the field, Rainer enjoyed sharing his technical knowledge about forestry with the landowners he visited. He also told them about ways to improve survival rates, such as mowing the grass between tree rows (especially in the first few years after a planting). Some of the landowners were especially memorable, such as a Toronto Architect planning to make the structures on his property net-neutral and a Renfrew County landowner who had planted 33,000 trees in a single year.

Rainer was born in South Africa and moved to Keswick, Ontario when he was 10-years-old. He completed an Environmental Studies Degree in Waterloo, and went on to work for Toronto and Region Conservation Authority and the Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks. When he’s not hard at work checking up on our planting sites, you can find Rainer hiking through forests with his wife and his German Shepard, Hanna. He also aspires to ride his motorcycle across Canada one day.

Learn more about Forests Ontario’s 50 Million Tree Program.