People

Paul Hanna  BSF, RPF

Principal and General Manager

Paul is the owner and president of Silverwood Consulting Ltd.  With over 25 years experience in resource management, he provides powerful vision and direction for all projects and client services.  He is a dynamic, creative professional, known for finding better solutions to old and new management challenges.

Paul’s diverse background  –  working for major forest licencees, for the provincial government, and as a  consultant to First Nations, energy sector companies, and both small and large forest operators – ensures that his clients get practical, cost-effective products.

After graduating from the University of British Columbia in 1986, he began his career in coastal BC, working on Vancouver Island as an operational forester with a major forest licencee.  He moved to north-west BC where he has since developed expertise in silviculture, forest health, analysis, strategic planning and carbon budget modeling.

Leaving the provincial government in 1998, Paul founded Silverwood Consulting to provide high quality forestry solutions to clients across the province.  His most recent work, overseeing the layout of BC Hydro’s North West Transmission Line north of Terrace, BC, and the layout of the Pacific Trails Natural Gas Pipeline east of Kitimat, BC, has cemented Silverwood’s reputation as a north-west based, multi-disciplinary planning and development company.

Dieter Marder  BASc, RPF

Project Manager

Dieter Marder, Senior Project Manager, brings over 30 years of resource management experience to the Silverwood team.  His expertise in engineering, small woodland management, silviculture, and GIS analysis, provides strong oversight to both small and large resource development projects.  Silverwood clients benefit from Dieter’s practical, operational experience, and his strengths in information management, modeling design and data analysis.  Dieter has a degree in Bio-Resource Engineering from the University of British Columbia, is trained in CSA Greenhouse Gas Inventorying and is an Accredited Silvicultural Surveyor.

Alyson Watt, BNRSc., BIT

Natural Resource Supervisor and Safety Coordinator

For over 10 years Alyson Watt has been working throughout British Columbia, Yukon and Alberta as an ecologist, environmental scientist, researcher and silviculture worker.  Her experiences are broad ranging and include vegetation monitoring, fish inventory and habitat assessment, stream classifications, environmental engineering and remediation. Her research projects have included studying climate change influences on white spruce growth in different regions of Yukon, as well as investigating nutritional profiles of the white spruce within this same region.  She has worked for MOFR assessing the impacts of pine beetle on lodge pole pine forests, how these forests have changed in structure and compositions and what wildlife habitats they are now offering.  She has also assisted with the establishment of permanent monitoring plots in Kluane National Park, identifying and recording vegetation compositions.  Miss Watt has lead field crews on restoration projects in the northern Alberta oil sands as well as supervised research assistants, construction crews, tree planting and forest tech crews. She has also planted trees in much of the remote wilderness of BC allowing her to gain understanding of the BEC zones and the silviculture practices within them. Having worked for various consulting companies and managing her own projects, Alyson has gained practical experience with data management and technical writing.  The combination of school and work experiences has made her a confident and capable decision maker as well as an effective communicator in both the field and office.

Joel Ewald, BSc., Adv. Dip. GIS

Natural Resource Technician, GIS technologist

Raised in Northwestern B.C., Joel Ewald has a passion for the area and a love for the land and resources around him. Joel started with Silverwood in 2012 after finishing a BSc. With a Physical Geography major from the University of the Fraser Valley. His studies have given him a broad knowledge base which spans earth sciences, ecology, and environmental science. While at Silverwood, Joel has acted as a field supervisor on many projects, including forestry engineering and layout, ecology and forest studies, and environmental management. He is also the employee HSE rep for the company, representing the concerns of non-management staff. He has a passion for technology and is currently working on an Advanced Diploma in GIS Applications from Vancouver Island University. He also leads the Silverwood team on advancing  technology uses in the field, taking advantage of innovations in mobile data collection and streamlining data collection.