Forestry Memories

Tom MacLellan’s Finland / Russia Trip – May 2005

In late May 2005 Tom McLellan, who was District Manager for Tilhill West Highland District at the time, visited Finland, Russia and North Wales over a period of 13 days. Below is an account of his travels and locations. The image is of a Russian fire sign, one of several humorous fire danger depictions that caught Tom’s attention and to which an Ai translation has been added. The PDF link below includes several of these signs with Ai translation that perhaps adds a touch more humour to the situation.

Tom writes:

"It was a trip full of superlatives: - over 2,000 miles travelled by car; 500 miles by train; 7 different beds in 13 nights; 54 different bird species seen or heard during the first day in Finland (so says Timo Lehesvirta, UPM’s chief ecologist who has been “twitching” since childhood), including Hobby / Osprey / Sea Eagles / Blackgrouse / and a flock of 90 + Cranes, together with two Elk; the biggest wood utilisation complex I have ever seen at the integrated Kaukas mills, producing 720k/t of pulp / 580k/t of paper / 500k/m3 sawn timber / 120k/m3 of plywood & other processed timber and employing 2200 staff; 10 hours of walking in
St Petersburg, including 5 hours walking round the Hermitage, “the best museum in the world”, (they say that if you spent 1 minute looking at each exhibit, that it would take 5 years out of your life !); a trip on the deepest metro underground in the world in St Petersburg; and in between all that, looking at superb managed forests in Finland, the wild semi-natural forests of Russia, avoiding mosquitoes and to finish the trip off, I met up with other senior Tilhill managers in North Wales and onto two wheels, to complete the 10 mile mountain bike trail at Llandegla Forest.

I also met some superb people on the trip. Bob Taylor, UPM’s Customer Communications Manager, a Scottish forester who had worked with me for 6 years during the mid-nineties and who had married Pia, a Finnish forester, organised a great itinerary, including the trip into Russia accompanying a team on a photographic assignment for a new customer web site Bob was developing, which demonstrates the environmental credentials of Russian timber imports.

Timo Lehesvirta, UPM’s Environmental Manager was responsible for identifying most of the 54 bird species recorded on the first day when we visited one of Finland’s national parks and for introducing me to the town of Nokia – famous for its Wellington boots!

Pekka Purasmaa has worked in Finnish forestry for more years than he cares to remember. With his wide knowledge of the industry and keen interest in Finnish history, the two days spent with him gave me a great insight into both. Pekka had also arranged for me to stay in the Kaukas Clubhouse – and boy was that being like lord of the manor!

The trip to Russia was led by Pelva Vladimirov assisted by Ilkka Kuuramaa. Pelva, a Russian forester trained in Finland, is UPM’s environmental auditor of Russian timber imports and regularly travels 1000km a week auditing supplier companies and inspecting harvesting sites. Ilkka is a Finnish forester who has learned Russian and is shortly to take up a position (at the time in 2005) based in St Petersburg with UPM’s Russian imports team.

All in all, a forester’s trip of a lifetime and of the more of the 400 + photographs which I took during his travels, the undernoted is a selection of Russian forest signs which show that Russians do have a sense of humour !

I did an Ai translation of my collection of Russian forest signs which came out with some interesting interpretations, some of which may be down to the clarity of the Cyrillic writing.

One wonders if the Hoppy potion is some sort of Russian concoction that they get high on !

And as for rooster comes from cigarette butts? - mind you in the drawing it does look like a red hot chicken !!"

Please see the PDF link below.

Download Large Version (545kB)

Download PDF (1.4MB)

Groups: Forest Signs

Group: Mystery and unknown - 138 pictures

3 Comments