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!