"We say our school is the forest, our students are science teachers."

Just over a dozen "students" recently attended class at an active logging operation in Carlton County. They were part of a "Teacher Forestry Tour" a workshop series that exposes educators to issues dealing with sustainable forestry.

One highlight of the stop on Potlatch land was watching "the processor" at work.

"He goes through he'll cut them down. It's very computerized inside there amazingly. As I mentioned earlier he can set the size of he log they're gonna go to."

One of the tenets of the program is to offer positive perspective to science teachers about the logging industry that they will hopefully bring back into their classes.

"One of the misconceptions they have is cutting down trees is bad and so it's really helped to see that's it's really a renewable resource and that it's actually necessary for the health of the forest, to cut down some of the trees."

"Wood is good! Every other product that you build with costs so much more in energy to produce and there's no - it can't decompose, it just gets dumped in a landfill when it's done. It's not a renewable source and lumber and trees are our only renewable source."

"Responsible stewardship is ensuring that we manage our forest for the future and that's I think, is an important message."

Important to all of us in this area, whatever we choose to build with. In Carlton County, I'm David Hoole for nature matters.

The teacher forestry tours will travel to Oregon and New York later this summer.