Australia
Brazil
Burma
Germany, federal republic
Mexico
Union of soviet socialist republics
United Kingdom
United States of America
Venezuela
· The Forestry and Timber Bureau has recently issued a publication Pinus radiata - a bibliography to 1963, which covers references to papers on Pinus radiata published to 31 December 1962, classified under 11 subject headings taken from the Oxford system of decimal classification for forestry, and includes an author index to the classified references serially numbered for this purpose.
The publication is priced at 15 / - (Australian currency) which includes cost of postage per ordinary mail. Orders accompanied by remittances should be addressed to the Director General, Forestry and Timber Bureau, Canberra.
· A still from a colored documentary film "Between life and death" prepared by Jean Manzon Films S.A. at the request of the Companhia Melhoramentos de São Paulo, Indústrias de Papel, is shown in Figure 1. Screened originally in Sao Paulo during the "Week of the Tree" in September 1863, the film has subsequently been shown all over Brazil to draw the attention of government authorities and to arouse public opinion to the danger of the devastation of the natural forests, and the urgent need for reforestation programs. This cause was given international prominence by the disastrous fires in 1963 in the Paraná pine region of Brazil.
· A standard nomenclature of forest plants, Burma (1962), which includes nomenclature of commercial timbers is available from the Forest Department, Rangoon.
· From 2 to 28 September 1963, a seminar on the development of tropical forestry, third in the series arranged by the German Foundation for Developing Countries in Berlin-Tegel in co-operation with FAO, was attended by 27 foresters from 15 French-speaking countries of Africa and Asia: Burundi, Cameroon, Dahomey, Gabon, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Laos, Madagascar, Mali, Rwanda, Senegal, Togo, Tunisia, Upper Volta and Viet-Nam. Five of the participants were the forest chiefs in their respective countries.
The four-week seminar consisted of 17 days of lectures and 11 days of field trips to various areas of forestry interest. The 16 lecturers, of whom six were drawn from FAO, all had practical experience in tropical countries. Themes ranged from problems of afforestation, administration, education and research, to the utilization of tropical woods and other wood products, and industrial planning.
The field trip led first to Hamburg where the participants visited the Federal Research Institute for Forestry and Timber Industries in Reinbek, the leading center in Germany on world forestry.
· The proposed development of the forest zone of Durango, covered by the Mexican national forest inventory (United Nations/FAO Special Fund project), consists of two parts: forest management . and exploitation; and forest industrial development.
To organize forest management and exploitation in the zone, a nonprofit-making society (asociación civil) has been formed by all the forest owners, both private and public. The zone comprises about 2 million hectares of which about one half is commercial or potentially commercial forest. This society undertakes the management of the forest including the building of roads, etc., as well as the exploitation and transport of the produce, which is sold to the forest industries. An annual investment of rather more than US $2 million per year is envisaged for the first 10 years, the major part of this amount being derived from sale of forest produce. The owners lease their land in perpetuity to the society and in return get a fixed annual income per hectare, irrespective of where timber is cut.
The state authorities have half the seats on the governing board, the owners the other half.
For industrial development a group of local business men have planned an integrated industry including a pulp and paper mill and sawmills. Although organizationally separate from the development of forest management and of exploitation, a close link between the two is provided because some of the industrialists are also major forest owners. The pulp and paper mill will use 350,000 to 400,000 cubic meters per year and will cost about US $22 million. New sawmills and plywood plants, as well as expansion of existing plants, will absorb 500,000 cubic meters of higher-grade timber, and will cost about US $10 million.
· An announcement of a new forest policy for the State of Durango including new forest industrial developments was made by the President of Mexico at the opening of the 1963 celebrations to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the founding of the city of Durango. In honor of the occasion, the staff of the United Nations Special Fund project (Mexican national forest inventory, FAO project manager F. C. Hummel) were asked to stage an exhibit (part of which can be seen in Figure 4). This was visited by the President who showed great interest as did the Minister of Agriculture who ordered the exhibit to be kept on view in Durango till December 1963 instead of the two weeks originally planned.
· A new book, Economics of the use and conservation of forest resources by Professor P. V. VASSILIEV (U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences, Moscow, 1963, 485 p.), discusses today's problems of the multiple use of forest resources and their conservation.
The first chapters are devoted to an analysis of changes in the pattern of world wood consumption and to the prospects for the development of commercial processing of wood in the U.S.S.R. Data on the present location of forest industries, on the prospects the regional development of industrial processing of wood, and on measures for maintaining the forest resources form a special chapter.
Many pages are devoted to inventory problems and to the appraisal and evaluation of the industry potential. The author presents a number of valuable suggestions and theories. Comparisons are made between the systems of forest resource inventory carried out according to the FAO scheme and the scheme adopted in the U.S.S.R. The author puts forward his own proposals.
Problems of cost evaluation, determination and analysis of production costs, and forest taxes are fully treated. A new problem of establishing the value of the standing timber is also dealt with. The author also discusses the views and suggestions of a number of other home and foreign economists.
The last chapters in the book consider in detail the results of recent original investigations carried out by the author and his colleagues on problems of analysis and forecasting of increase in forest productivity. A methodology for calculating and analyzing measures to increase forest productivity (worked out by a candidate of agricultural sciences, T. A. Koulikova) and evaluation of the effect of these measures are specially treated.
The book is intended for research workers and specialists in different branches of forestry as well as for students of forestry and economics in higher educational establishments. The bibliography lists 66 Russian and 19 foreign publications. The volume was edited by the corresponding member of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences, N. N. Nekrassov.
· "A Summary of Information on the Uses of Helicopters in Forestry" by D. K. BROOKS, which appeared in Volume 24, Number 2, of Forestry abstracts published by the Commonwealth Agricultural Bureaux, Farnham Royal, England, is available as a reprint (price 4s.). It discusses the wide diversity of uses to which the modern helicopter has been put with increasing success; there is a bibliography of all recent literature on the subject.
Helicopters are now widely used in forest firefighting, aerial photography and forest surveys, forest regeneration operations (sowing and transport of planting stock and fertilizers), forest protection (pest and disease control, brush control and suppression of low-grade grade timber or weed species). For the extraction of timber the helicopter is still very much at the trial stage, though its eventual use for this purpose is now widely held to be no more than a natural and inevitable extension of some of its present commercial and industrial uses. The article gives news of recent experience in timber exaction with the help of helicopters in Canada, the United Kingdom, the U.S.S.R., and the United States of America.
· Practical forestry for the agent and surveyor, by Cyril E. Hart (The Estates Gazette Limited, 28 Denmark Street, London W.C. 2, 1962, 438 pp., illustrated) is a valuable handbook for the woodland owner or his agent now faced with a difficult variety of technical advice on forestry, a mass of legislation, a vast literature on everything from soil science to timber conversion, and the increasing cost of forest labor.
· Careers in conservation, opportunities in natural resources (The Ronald Press Company, 15 East 26th Street, New York 10, 1963 v + 141 p.) provides a practical guide to the career opportunities that await young persons interested in conservation. The book is edited for the Natural Resources Council of America by Henry Clepper, Executive Secretary of the Society of American Foresters and long-time protagonist of the cause of international forestry.
· Economics of the American lumber industry, by Joseph Zaremba (Robert Speller and Sons, publishers, New York 36, 1962, 231 p., illustrated) sets out to show why the industry has developed as a strong private sector resistant to public participation in credit facilities, research extension, and other activities likely to promote the welfare of the industry and the benefit of the public. It makes recommendations for improvement which deserve serious attention.
· Producing, harvesting, and marketing high quality southern timber, edited by William C. Hopkins (Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge, La, 107 p.) is the record of the 11th Annual Forestry Symposium organized by the School of Forestry and Wildlife Management and the General Extension Division of the Louisiana State University. The talks stress the importance of timber quality for the practicing silviculturist, reducing harvesting costs and marketing problems.
· The new building (shown in Figure 5) on the campus of the University of Los Andes, Mérida, houses the Latin-American Forest Research Institute. The formal opening ceremonies were conducted by the Minister of Agriculture, Mr. Victor Gimenez-Landinez, the Rector of the University of Los Andes, Prof. Pedro Rincón, and the President of the Institute, Mr. Rafael E. Viloria Diaz. Mr. N. Altuve Gonzales, Director of the Department of Natural Resources, Dr. N. A. Osara, Director of FAO's Forestry and Forest Products Division, and Mr. Lucas Tortorelli, Chief, FAO Advisory Group on Research and Education, participated. The Latin-American Forest Research Institute was begun under FAO's technical assistance program and is now an autonomous institution, supported by contributions from 11 governments of the region.
