CAMPBELL RIVER, B.C. – Two British Columbia companies have collaborated to develop a special camera to improve both the efficiency and the safety of grapple yarding, a forestry operation in which a worker uses a “grapple yarder” – a type of cab with an angled boom – to remove felled timber from steep slopes, often as far as 150 metres away. A March 21 press release from TimberWest Forest Corporation announced that it and T-MAR Industries had created a grapple camera that allows an operator to view timber areas on a video screen. The camera is also expected to make the job safer for hook tenders, workers who communicate with the cab operators by radio from the log areas to guide the operations. TimberWest cited a Jan. 2015 incident in which one of its grapple yarders had hit a hook tender with a log, causing serious injury. “Today, all of the grapple yarders operating on TimberWest land must have a grapple camera,” the release added. “T-MAR is now commercializing the camera and selling it globally.” Fall River Logging, a contractor for TimberWest, has been using the camera since Nov. 2015, according to information from TimberWest’s website.