Family Forestland Tour

On Tuesday our fellows, interns, and program manager visited the private forest of Anne and Richard Hanshu. The Hanshu’s own approximately 500 acres of forest in the Gales Creek area, just west of Portland. They have owned and managed the land for over 50 years and continue to manage it so they can pass it on to their children. They were voted Oregon Tree Farmers of the Year back in 2000 and manage their property for timber, wildlife, and riparian health, and aesthetics. They are trying to find a way to economically sustain their property and are considering entering the emerging carbon market. The link for the YouTube video shows them on CNN's Business Weekly program talking about this aspect of their forest.

YouTube Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJwlJIMb1Js

Hanshu's Website

http://www.doneen.com/

We enjoyed friendly hospitality and an honest assessment of their forest management practices. They took us through thinned stands, replanted stands, and restored riparian areas.

“I’m impressed that just two people are managing the forest this intensely. The Hanshu’s seem to know every tree on their property and to work nonstop between pruning, planting, harvesting, building, educating, and advocating. What struck me visually is how similar their stands look after different amounts of thinning. They have a beautiful forest.” –Danielle, intern

“Learning about how to protect riparian areas is important to me because I haven’t seen this practice in the Congo. I learned that it is important to create shade along the creek to block the light so the creek remains cool for the fish.” -Elikia, fellow from the DR Congo.
We thank Anne and Richard and hope to be back soon!
Click on the picture for more photos.

New fellow from Australia and a trip to the classical Chinese gardens

Our newest fellow, Sue Baker arrived a week ago from Hobart, Tazmania in Australia. She is a biodiversity researcher at Forestry Tasmania, and she comes to the WFI to study Variable Retention Silviculture (VRS). “VRS is a new silviculture system designed to retain the structural diversity of timberlands. If you clear cut a forest, say on rotation every 80 years, you never get old growth structure. The idea is to preserve biodiversity and create habitat trees for beetles, nesting possums, birds, and other species. VRS was invented in the Pacific Northwest and is widely practiced in British Columbia. There are two main types of VRS practices: dispersed retention and aggregated retention. A relatively new practice in Australia, aggregated retention silviculture just emerged in Tasmania in 2004.”

Sue joined fellows Aline and Elikia and program manager Chandalin at the Portland Classical Chinese Gardens in old-town Chinatown on Thursday. Not only did they not get rained on, but they were lucky enough to see a little bit of sun!

WFI welcomes 2010!

Greetings from the WFI!

2009 is over, and what a year it was! We hosted fellows from Australia, Zambia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, China, Germany, Brazil, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. We got a new program manager and several new interns. Now it’s time to look ahead to what’s in store for 2010. Soon we’ll be getting another fellow from Australia, Sue Baker. We will start having monthly ‘cultural Portland’ afternoons where we explore the local sites and history of the City of Roses. First up is a trip to the classical Chinese gardens in Old-Town Chinatown.

Again this year we will host the International Educators Institute forest study tour (see below for details) and Who Will Own the Forest? 6. Keep on the lookout for more updates about these events, as well as posts about field trips and new fellows.

Ciao!

International Educators Institute

Term: July 11-16, 2010

Apply by: February 28, 2010

The International Educators Institute is an innovative forest study tour for environmental educators and forest researchers. Combining content-rich, hands-on experiences in the field with a multicultural exchange of best practices in education and research, IEI seeks to advance effective teaching and learning about social, economic, and environmental challenges facing the world’s forests. World-class scenery, special behind-the-scenes tours, and interviews with local people are combined with peer-to-peer leadership development.

The course is scheduled July 11-16, 2010 in Portland, Oregon. Application deadline is Feb. 28, 2010.
For more information visit: http://www.worldforestry.org/wfi/dm_institute.php

WFI Says Goodbye to Three Outstanding Fellows

As the fall season comes to a close and we progress into the winter months, WFI bids goodbye to German fellow Kati Brueckner, Chinese fellow Shouxin Xie, and Taiwanese fellow Yu-jen Lin. They all contributed so much to our program during their time here and will be greatly missed.

Kati returned home to Berlin in November with her husband Steffen and daughter Clara in tow after completing her six month fellowship here. A week after her return home, Kati writes that she was still recovering from jet lag, but very excited to share all the pictures of the wonderful things she saw here with her family. During her fellowship, Kati worked to understand the social and scientific complexities surrounding the creation and implementation of the NW Forest Plan. She interviewed numerous people directly involved with the plan and discovered the many intricacies that made it one of the landmark forest management decisions of its time. More about the results of her study can be found on the WFI website in the presentations and posters sections.

German Fellow Kati Brueckner at Harry
Merlo’s ranch in summer 2009.

Xie returned to Beijing in early December to a happy homecoming with his wife and son. He says that he is happy to be with his family again and also happy that he “…does not have jet lag problem at all!” (Kati would be jealous!)
Xie will resume work as the Division Director for the Department of Forest Resource Management at China’s State Forestry Administration after a short break to readjust to being back at home after a year’s absence. Xie spent his year at WFI studying policy and management styles of sustainable forestry and will use the knowledge gained during his fellowship to help guide decisions back home. Already, he is looking back fondly on his time here at WFI and writes that everything he learned during his time here he will share and apply to his work and life in the future.

Chinese fellow Shouxin Xie at the USFS Dorena
Genetic Resource Center in Cottage Grove.

Yu-jen is our most recent departee, leaving just after the Christmas holiday for home in Taipei. He is happy to be back at home with is wife, but also misses Portland and the WFI. After spending nearly a year here studying biomass utilization processes, Yu-jen returned home with a research proposal in hand, ready to present to his work unit at the Taiwan Forestry Research Institute. Yu-jen did exhaustive research regarding methods and materials used for forest biomass utilization in the Pacific Northwest. His research led him to the idea of using the bamboo resources readily available in Taiwan to make wood pellets for energy. He will propose this research upon his return to work and hopes to propel Taiwan towards the biomass utilization industry.

Taiwanese fellow Yu-jen Lin with his wife
Tsai Ling-chuan outside WFI’s Merlo Hall.

Ned Hayes Remembered, Long Time Friend of WFC

Long time friend and director of the World Forestry Center Edmund Hayes Jr. passed away on December 2 at age 83 following a stroke. Ned and his family, including son Peter Hayes, took great personal interest in the WFI. They annually hosted fellows and staff and led tours of their FSC certified woodland properties near Portland. Ned served as Chairman of the Board of the World Forestry Center in the 90’s and continued to provide advice and financial support to the center’s education, tree farms and outreach efforts, culminating in the museum’s extensive renovation in 2005. He will be deeply missed by all here at the World Forestry Center.

Ned Hayes with Chinese fellow Jialu Xie at the Wind River Canopy Crane Research Facility during the 2004 International Educators Institute.

Welcome to Ke, Aline, and Kati

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Originally uploaded by World Forest Institute

Following the recent arrivals of three new WFI International Fellows to Portland, Oregon, WFI can happily say that for the first time in its history, the Fellowship boasts more women in the program than men. Each woman brings a different background and project, but all are firsts in their own way.
 
Kati Brueckner is a student at the University of Applied Sciences in Eberswalde, Germany. Her six month research project will examine the adoption and implementation of the Northwest Forest Plan. She is focusing on the contexts and underlying interests of policy and science that influenced the debate around the plan, in order to assess their contributions to the discourse as well as the ecopolitical responses. Kati is our first female German Fellow, and she actually won her sponsorship funding by winning $33,000 Euros in Germany's "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” Now that's a first!
 
Dr. Ke Dong is a Senior Forest Program Officer at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) China Liaison Office, based in Beijing. During her 12 month Fellowship, Ke will examine Payment for Ecological Services (PES) as a way to balance development with conservation objectives, and she will conduct a comparative study between China and the US to evaluate increasing international practices in PES. Dr. Ke is our first Fellow from China who comes through an NGO rather than state government, which shows how much the role of NGOs has grown in China in recent years.
 
Aline Moreira from Brazil is our first American Forest Foundation-sponsored Fellow. She completed her Masters in Sustainable Resource Management in the School of Forest Science and Resource Management at the Technical University in Munich, Germany, and has a background in social work. She will be spending her 12 month Fellowship to update and improve AFF's Project Learning Tree's "Global Connections: Forests of the World" curriculum. This is a guide and activity set for educators to help students gain an increased understanding and appreciation of the world forest environment, with emphasis on the human interaction with, and dependence on, those environments.

A beautiful dinner!

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Originally uploaded by World Forest Institute

WFI founder Harry Merlo hosted the Fellows for a lovely outdoor dinner at his home in Portland. Click on Kati and Harry for more photos.

GreenWood Breeds Success in Poplar Plantations

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Originally uploaded by World Forest Institute

A worldwide leader in the hybridization of fast-growing, high-yield poplar trees, GreenWood Resources (GWR) develops genetic material and manages plantation resources in strategic regions in the US, Asia, and South America. Fellows visited with GWR’s managers and toured their breeding facilities and hybrid poplar plantations in western Oregon.

Developing high quality poplar genotypes is key to the company’s success. GWR breeds improved parent material and hybrid offspring, and have created over 40,000 varieties of hybrid poplar. Only the best varieties are used for clonal propagation, after field testing for disease resistance, yields, growth form, and other characteristics.

GreenWood Resources manages 2,500 hectares of hybrid poplars in western Oregon near Clatskanie, plus an additional 12,500 acres in eastern Oregon. The west-side poplars are grown on an 8-year rotation for pulp and 12-year rotation for sawlogs. Although the current markets are depressed, harvest was ongoing for shipment of logs by container to Korea. The logs are shipped via the Columbia river, and will be at their final destination in less than two weeks from harvest.

For more photos, click on Shen!

Oregon SAF Annual Meeting

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Originally uploaded by World Forest Institute

The Oregon SAF annual meeting including several mill tours in southern Oregon. Click on the photo for more shots of Herbert Lumber, Roseburg Forest Products, and C&D Lumber.

Oregon Department of Forestry Shares Forest Management Vision

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Originally uploaded by World Forest Institute

In addition to managing state forest lands, the Oregon Department of Forestry manages fire protection, oversees the Forest Practices Act, and develops forest policy and planning. The agency employs 800 people year round, and during fire season adds another 400 employees. Managers Dave Mormon and Dan Postrel introduced Fellows to the many functions and duties of the state agency, and discussed their experiences working for ODF.

Essentially, as a state agency ODF is governed by the people of Oregon. The Board of Forestry, the governor, advisory groups, and the state’s citizens direct the agency’s function and budget. This was of great interest to the Fellows, particularly those from countries where public land management agencies are organized in a much different fashion.

After visiting with ODF in Salem, Fellows toured the nearby State Capital to learn how state law is made. Many Fellows are unfamiliar with the importance of the fifty different state governments with the United States. Although the US has federal laws, much power and autonomy is given to individual states to make policy on the state level. This is particularly true for forestry policy for private and state lands, which in Oregon make up about 37% of all forestland.

Click on the group for more photos.