Resource Development

As long as there have been forests in Alberta, humans have been making use of them in ways that make our lives functional and easier. This has not changed. However, how, and for what we use the resource has changed considerably since the 1700s, when Peter Pond built his first permanent residence in Alberta. And Peter Pond's use of resources would have been different than that of hundreds of years before, when the Native people indigenous to the area made their homes with trees and other materials available to them. Now, making use of forests as paper, structures for homes, and even pencils, has become a full-fledged and economically-significant industry.     

The development of forest resources will be discussed in this section. With Alberta's population increasing, as well as knowledge about the importance of forests to Alberta and the world, Albertans are continually developing new ways of making use of one of the Province's most valuable resources.