Now the company is flourishing in the vast woodland surrounding Mackenzie. Working with a 200km, radius of Mackenzie, most of which extends to the northern boundary of that range, the Duz Cho logging teams are progressing through the vast forests of mountain pine beetle-affected wood. As a result, the crews are currently logging an annual wood diet of approximately 70 per cent pine and 30 per cent spruce, trying to rid the forests of as much beetle wood as they can, before it can no longer be harvested for use. During my visit, 1 met the Duz Cho team in the forests southwest of Mackenzie, just off the road to Fort St. James near the recent Mount Milligan copper-gold mining development. The harvesting site featured an operator ripping through MPB stems with a Tigercat 845C mounted with a Tigercat 5702 felling saw. A second operator in the area was running an 870C, also fitted with a 5702. The thin stems were allowing the operator to collect an average of six to eight stems at a time, stacking the trees for processing. The processing portion of the Duz Cho operation is subcontracted to a local company, who uses primarily a combination of Hitachi forestry machines with Waratah heads. "To find young skilled workers is getting harder and harder in the logging industry," Robert MacCarthy says. "Young people are drawn to Alberta's oil and gas industry for bigger dollars versus the logging industry, which provides a steady workflow. It's tougher to get young kids to come that way."