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!