Job loss blessing in disguise for researcher.

• Author: Ross, Ian
• Position: News - BioForest Technologies Inc.

After being purged in a government down-sizing, Craig Howard and some colleagues could have left the Canadian Forest Service (CFS) with a bitter taste in their collective mouths. Instead they saw only opportunity.

Since establishing BioForest Technologies Inc. in 1996, a Sault Ste. Marie-based forest and pest-management company, they have struck up a symbiotic relationship with the government forestry service to commercialize ideas developed in forestry research labs.

"I'd recommend getting fired to anybody," says the glib-speaking Howard, a former CFS chief of regulatory affairs at the Sault's Great Lakes Forestry Centre who views receiving his pink slip a blessing in disguise.

With senior levels of government getting out of forest health and pest management, Howard and his outcast associates Joe Meating and Paul Bolan saw an opening to deliver those kinds of specialized services to clients across the country.

Headquartered in Sault Ste. Marie - home to the federal Great Lakes Forestry Centre and the provincial Ontario Forest Research Institute - the eight-employee firm also maintains an office in Prince Albert, Sask. and will shortly re-open a Fredericton, N.B. office, bringing two new people into the fold.

Among the company's largest ongoing projects is tackling the cyclical spruce budworm problem in Saskatchewan. For six years they have conducted survey work for the province, assessing the insect's population and providing biological information on what areas should be treated or left alone.

But BioForest Technologies workers are not just bug chasers. They also conduct forest certification work, independent forest audits and provide a suite of pest management services for clients ranging from cottage owners and associations in central Ontario to provincial governments and private American companies managing millions of hectares of woodlands.

A real opportunity for future growth, Howard explains, comes from their close ties with CFS.

"As an organization, they're very open with...