United Nations special fund for economic development
North American forestry commission
Personnel news
United Nations Special Fund Economic Development -North American Forestry Commission - Personnel News
A note was included in a recent issue of Unasylva on four national projects for which FAO had been appointed executing agency: in Mexico, Chile, Morocco and Turkey. Five more projects have now become operational, and are described below. Two other projects will shortly be in operation involving research and training in Lebanon, and the expansion of the Poplar Research Institute in Turkey which was featured in Unasylva, Volume, 15 (4).
In connection with his attendance at the recent session of the Near East Forestry Commission at Adana in Turkey, EGON GLESINGER, Director of FAO s Forestry and Forest Products Division, visited the Poplar Research Institute at Izmit before going to Ankara for negotiations about the second phase of the Antalya preinvestment survey project and other technical assistance programs. Subsequently he inspected also the Near East Forest Rangers' School at Lattakia, Syria, and held discussions with the authorities in that country and Lebanon on other pending field projects. In the United Arab Republic he had further negotiations on field projects, joined by K. OEDEKOVEN, the FAO Regional Forestry Officer. One promising project relates to desert reclamation along the coastal strip between El Alamain and Alexandria. This falls within the objectives of the FAO Mediterranean Development Project. Earlier in the year, with other members of FAO staff, Dr. Glesinger had inspected the progress of the Special Fund integrated development projects in Morocco and Tunisia.
ARGENTINA
The purpose of this project is to establish a forestry and watershed management training institute dependent upon the forestry school of the University of La Plata, and concerned especially with training and research in the management of forested mountain areas and protection zones. The fields to be covered are:
(a) soil and water conservation, including watershed (catchment area) management and torrent control, forest protection, afforestation, range improvement;(b) forest engineering (felling, skidding, road building, machinery and equipment use and maintenance, and transportation of forest products):
(c) aerial photo-interpretation for forest inventory and mapping purposes;
(d) related social and economic problems.
Training, which will be free, will be directed both toward students of the forestry school as part of the regular curriculum (initially a two-year course for 20 students) and also toward outside technical officers whether or not these are on the staff of the Forest Service. Shorter courses will be arranged in this instance.
The instructors assigned to the project will also organize and carry out appropriate research. An associated field research station will be established with a program which will be co-ordinated with the research work of other national experimental stations and with that carried out by other Latin-American countries, or at regional centers.
J. GARCÍA NÁJERA, Professor at the Escuela Superior Técnica de Ingenieros de Montes, University of Madrid, and who has been associated with the Instituto Forestal de Investigaciones y Experiencias in Spain and with previous FAO work in Argentina, has been appointed as FAO project manager. The institute will also help to develop demonstration areas and to furnish technical assistance and an extension service.
BRAZIL
A national forestry school at university level is to be established at Viçosa in the State of Minas Gerais, and is to operate in close co-ordination with the Rural University of Minas Gerais. A forest research organization is also to be set up. Both will come under the authority of a special technical board which will serve as the planning and co-ordinating body for forestry education and research for the whole of Brazil.
The research organization will administer a forestry research station established in the vicinity of the school and direct two other experimental stations administered by the federal Forest Service in the Amazon region and in the Paraná pine region.
The complete school course will cover a period of five years, the first two years being taken up with the same basic subjects as are taught at Brazilian schools of agriculture. The next three years will be devoted entirely to forestry, with the last year reserved for specialized studies.
Recruitment will be from two sources:
(a) students who have completed high school and passed a special examination in mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology: successful candidates will take the whole five-year course;(b) students who subsequent to high school have undergone a course of training which will exempt them from the first two years of the course at the forestry school, and who have passed a special examination: students in this category will take only the last three years of the forestry school course.
Initially, the objective will be to turn out approximately 30 graduates each year, which is the estimate for the numbers who can be given employment by, or find employment outside, government service.
HONDURAS
A. HAIDER, Chief of the Forest Inventory Section in the Norwegian State Forest Service, has been appointed FAO manager of a project designed to provide the Government with the trained staff and the basic data necessary for the effective development of approximately 7,000 square kilometers of pine stands, and which forms part of the short-term development program prepared by the Planning Commission for Economic Development in Honduras. Feasibility studies will be undertaken of areas selected for immediate development.
The purpose of the project is twofold: training and development, as a follow-up of earlier FAO work in the country.
The Special Fund contribution will be limited to assisting the Government of Honduras in the following phases:
(a) establishment of an inventories section within the Forest Service able to undertake reconnaissance surveys and detailed inventories for management plan purposes;(b) collection and study of available aerial photographs regardless of the purpose for which they were taken; preliminary map preparation, photointerpretation, photo transfer and determination of suitable aerial survey techniques;
(c) management of a reconnaissance survey covering about 15,000 square kilometers, based on aerial photographs at 1: 60,000 scale and with systematic ground checks;
(d) selection of about 7,000 square kilometers out of the 15,000 square kilometers for immediate development; the area or areas comprising this total to be subjected to a detailed forest inventory: ground surveys to follow immediately after the aerial survey;
(e) complete census of existing forest industries to determine exactly the present industrial utilization of the various roundwood categories and to allow for the delineation of a development plan for forest industries in the light of expected future domestic demand and export possibilities;
(f) working or management plans to be prepared for the specific area or areas selected for development and inventoried.
PAKISTAN
M. KREUTZINGER, Director of the Forest Research Institute in Warsaw (Poland) and Professor of the Forest Faculty at the Agriculture University in Poznan, has been appointed FAO manager of a project designed to expand the Pakistan Forestry Institute. Professor Kreutzinger has for a long time been a member of the Permanent Committee of the International Union of Forest Research Organisations (IUFRO).
Training under the project is to be provided in two categories, a degree course for forest service employees and a diploma course for ranger staff. An international staff will reinforce the general planning, organization, and supervision of research and education. It will stimulate research in the subject-matter fields of silviculture, forest genetics, and ecology for arid zones; and, in teaching, it will concentrate on watershed management, range management, and forestry economics. Research and teaching in other fields will be the responsibility of the Government of Pakistan.
The Pakistan forestry institute will include the present Forestry College and Research Institute, established in conjunction with Peshawar University, West Pakistan, and a unit to be established at the Forest Research Laboratory at Chittagong, East Pakistan, to carry out research in silviculture, forest botany, watershed management, and forestry economics. This laboratory already has a considerable department dealing with wood utilization research.
SUDAN
The purpose of the project is to assist the Government in establishing a forest research institute and to provide improved facilities for training at the Forest Rangers' College. The institute and the college will work closely together. On the one hand, the staff of the institute will assist the college staff in teaching the students; on the other hand, the students, as part of their practical training, will undertake field work related to the research program of the institute.
The program of the research institute will be directly related to the large-scale forestry development planned by the Government to meet the fast-growing needs for timber, poles, firewood and processed wood products. Training at the college will be strengthened in regard to:
(a) silviculture, protection and management of existing forests;(b) establishment of plantations of fast-growing and drought-resistant exotic or indigenous wood species;
(c) forestry economics and forest influences;
(d) production, processing and marketing of forest products.
The institute will have its headquarters and main facilities at Khartoum in the arid northern region, With out-stations in western, eastern and southern Sudan. The FAO project manager is J. V. JACKSON (United Kingdom) who has already held an FAO assignment in Sudan for many years.
As a direct and concrete result of the North American Forestry Commission's founding session held in Mexico City, 24 to 29 July 1961, the first session of the Working Party on Forest Insects and Diseases convened for a two-day meeting in Ottawa on 11 April 1962 to study ways and means best to develop international co-operation between the three member countries of the Commission - Canada, Mexico, and the United States.
The meeting was opened and the delegates officially welcomed by J. D. B. HARRISON, Deputy Minister of Forestry for Canada and current chairman of the North American Forestry Commission. Subsequently, the members elected M. L. PREBBLE, Director, Forest Entomology and Pathology Branch, Department of Forestry of Canada, as their first chairman.
As a result of the two days of discussion, the nine delegates agreed that the objectives of the working party for the next twelve months would be as follows:
1. to define the major forest insect and disease problems of mutual interest to two or more member countries and for each problem to provide a summary of distribution, hosts, description of damage, present and potential impact, control measures, and to define research needs;2. to enunciate quarantine principles, undertake a review of present legislation in the member countries, and to analyze procedures where improvements might be effected, with recommendations directed to this end;
3. to exchange information on insect and disease occurrences, biological studies, experimental and operational control programs, as promptly as possible, with a view to encouraging collaboration on problems of mutual concern to two or more of the member countries.
The working party decided to meet again this autumn in Washington, D. C. It will make its report to the North American Forestry Commission in 1963.
Those representing the member countries at this first meeting of the Working Group on Forest Insects and Diseases were as follows:
Canada - M. L. PREBBLE, Director, Forest Entomology and Pathology Branch, Department of Forestry, V. J. NORDIN, Associate Director (Pathology), Forest Entomology and Pathology Branch, Department of Forestry, and C. W. FARSTAD, Director, Plant Protection Division, Department of Agriculture.
Mexico - RAUL RODRIGUEZ LARA, Sección Entomología, Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Forestales, and HUMBERTO MORENO NORIEGA, Jefe del Departamento de Sanidad Forestal, Dirección de Protección Forestal.
United States of American - J. A. BEAL, Director, Division of Forest Insect Research, U.S. Forest Service, J. R. HANSBROUGH, Director, Division of Forest Disease Research, U.S. Forest Service, W. V. BENEDICT, Director. Division of Forest Pest Control. U.S. Forest Service, and E. P. REAGAN;, Director, Plant Quarantine Division. Agricultural Research Service. U.S. Department of Agriculture.
S. L. PRINGLE (Canada), Professor of Forestry at the University of New Brunswick, has been appointed to the Economics Branch in the place of G. R. GREGORY (U.S.A.) who has returned to his post as Professor of Forest Economics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Also returned to his post as Forest Economist at the Forest Research Institute, Rotorua, is M. B. GRAINGER (New Zealand) who, under an arrangement with the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, has for the past year been working on a survey of wood needs and forest resources in the African region.
M. ANDERSEN (Denmark) has been promoted Chief of the Silviculture Section at Rome headquarters in the place of M. A. HUBERMAN (U.S.A.) who has been transferred to Mexico as regional forestry officer for the northern region of Latin America and liaison officer with the North American Forestry Commission. H. CHAUVIN (France) who served for many years with FAO's forestry mission in the Amazon region and was subsequently regional forestry officer in Rio de Janeiro, has been transferred to the Logging Section at Geneva. P. COCHIN (France), formerly of the headquarters staff and who has been serving in Peru for several years on a technical assistance assignment, has been transferred to the New York headquarters of the United Nations Special Fund for Economic Development. A. L. TORTORELLI (Argentina), Latin American advisory group on education and research, has been transferred from Mexico to Rio de Janeiro.
Officers who have recently joined the divisional staff from field posts include L. V. BURNS (Jamaica), M.F.E. DE BACKER (Belgium), H. ETTER (Switzerland), D. A. FRANCIS (U.K.), A. G. FRIEDRICH (Germany), M. GONZALES DE MOYA (Cuba), C. LANKESTER (Canada), and J. PRATS LLAURADÓ (Spain). Headquarters staff who have been directly recruited are TALAT EREN (Turkey), K. HAMAD (Sudan), KIM MYUNG Soo (Korea), R. PAREWICZ (Poland) and Y. I. ROITTO (Finland).
