This article is part of the Herald’s 2015 Forestry Supplement, put out each year to coincide with National Forest Week.

Like many Merritt residents, Andrea Inwards has built a career around forestry. Though while many are busy with the job of turning trees into lumber, Inwards is concerned with regulation.

After obtaining her science degree in forest management from UBC, she became a registered professional forester for the provincial government. That was 24 years ago, and she hasn’t looked back.

Her job has many different facets to it. Part of it is looking after wood lot licenses and cut control. But her favourite part of her job is community forestry.

A community forest is an area-based license managed by a local community and its stakeholders. About 10 years ago, the B.C. provincial government changed the Forest Act to allow communities to hold forest licenses.

“It’s about employing local people, diversifying what you get from the economy, safety and improving relations with First Nations,” Inwards told the Herald.

She helped set up a bunch of them in the Southern Interior Forest Region, including Princeton, Lumby, Clinton, Kaslo and Slocan, to name a few.

“We would give them an area of land, and they would be responsible for all the planning, but they would also get the revenue from the wood,” explained Inwards.

“They pay an annual rent on the land based on their annual allowable cut, and then they pay a stumpage for what they cut.” That stumpage rate — or what they pay the Crown for the wood — is exceptionally low.

In some cases they’re managed by the municipality — in others, they’re managed by special interest groups.

Inwards’ job is to meet with the community initially and tell them about the program and what the expectations are. Then she’d walk them through the application process. Ideally, said Inwards, the forest is managed to reflect the values of the people in that area.

“Some of them are super cool, the one in Likely — it’s a tiny little place, but they do amazing things for their community,” said Inwards. Likely is a small community located in the Cariboo. “They deliver firewood to the shut-ins and the single moms and stuff like that — it’s really cool.”

She said the meetings in Cherryville include home made ice cream.

“It’s pretty fun, because it’s a different client base,” she said. “So now we’re dealing with little community groups, or city managers who don’t know any forestry stuff.”

Of course, much of her job involves dealing with other members of the forestry industry — loggers, mill managers, consultants, or “people who do the actual work,” she laughed. But she said she doesn’t mind that, either.

“The community of forestry is really nice in this area,” she said. “There isn’t a ton of change. They’re starting to get more young people in as older people move out. I’ve been dealing with the Tolko guys since day one and they’re a super group, and Aspen has lots of really good people.”

Inwards serves on the local forestry committee, a group that gets together to enhance the image of the forestry sector and try to educate people on the industry. It has representatives from government and industry on it.

“We do tree planting with the grade fives, we do a golf tournament in the spring, we’re doing a ball tournament [soon] — basically it’s just getting everybody out together,” she said. They also give out bursaries and do a poster contest.

She said one of the things she enjoys most about the job is the people. “The community of forestry is really nice in this area,” she said.