Sixteen Special Fund forestry projects - FAO staff changes at Rome - Eighth session of "Silva Mediterranea" - Watershed management study tour - African wildlife investigation.
Sixteen Special Fund forestry projects
The United Nations Special Fund for Economic Development is now contributing to the financing of 16 national projects for which FAO, through the Forestry and Forest Products Division, is the operating agency. A number of these projects (in Argentina, Chile, Honduras, Mexico, Morocco, Sudan, Turkey and Pakistan.) have already been described in Unasylva. Other projects about to come into operation are for a national forestry school in Brazil (Project Manager: G. H. SPEIDEL, Germany); for forestry education, training, and research in Lebanon. (Project Manager: M. E. DE COULON, Switzerland); expansion of the poplar research institute in Turkey (Project Manager: J. CHARDENON, France); a forestry and forest products research institute in Burma; a pre-investment survey of selected forest areas in Greece (Project Manager: EL. G. ROGERS U.S.A.); a forestry and range management institute and forest rangers school in Iran (Project Manager: V. TREGUBOV, Yugoslavia); a forestry school at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria (Project Manager: J. WYATT SMITH, U. K.); and a project for forestry education and research in Peru. Further projects in Ecuador, Guatemala, Jordan, Thailand and Venezuela are expected to be approved by the UN Special Fund Council meeting in January 1963.
The Forestry and Forest Products Division is now responsible for the second largest proportion, after the Land and Water Development Division, of the UN Special Fund projects for which FAO is the executing agency. The average value of the Special Fund contribution to each project is $736,000, and average duration 4 ½ years. The Division is also participating in the operation of 17 more projects for which other Divisions of the Organization have the main responsibility.
FAO staff changes, at Rome
It is 16 years since FAO's Forestry and Forest Products Division was established. It has grown tremendously in the time since 1946 in scope and functions and in strength, and throughout that entire period TONY FRANÇOIS, Chief of the Forest Policy Branch, has been a constant guide, counsellor, and source of authority. Now he has retired from the Organization.
Many will long connect his name with the masterful FAO publication Forest policy, law and administration which he wrote, and with the Principles of Forest Policy adopted by the Conference of FAO in 1951 and now universally acknowledged. He was active in the creation of all the Regional Forestry Commissions which now span the whole membership of FAO. His special fields of interest, apart from administrative and institutional problems, were the relations between forestry and agriculture, and the whole range of subjects loosely grouped as "forest influences": his hobby, one could say, was shifting cultivation. On all these matters he brought to bear a wealth of knowledge and experience, and an inexhaustible capacity for lucid writing. His relaxation was to paint.
Graduated from the Ecole polytechnique in Paris and from the Ecole nationale des eaux et forêts at Nancy, Mr. François rendered distinguished service in many parts of France and particularly Savoie, before being seconded to FAO. He has now retired also from the French Forest Service and has been accorded the rank of Inspecteur général honoraire des forêts.
RENÉ G. FONTAINE, who has been serving as Chief, Forestry Institutions Section, is replacing Mr. François as Chief, Forest Policy Branch. Mr Fontaine has been on the permanent staff of the Forestry and Forest Products Division since the very beginning of the Organization. Prior to his appointment with FAO he served as Inspecteur des forêts in the French Forest Service. He holds degrees in forestry and agronomy from the Ecole nationale des eaux et forêts at Nancy and from the Institut national agronomique in Paris.
Eighth session of "Silva Mediterranea"
On the invitation of the Government of Yugoslavia, FAO Subcommission on Mediterranean Forestry "Silva Mediterranea" held its eighth session at Dubrovnik, from 12 to 15 May 1962, with representatives present from France, Greece, Israel, Italy, Morocco, Portugal, Spain, Tunisia, and Yugoslavia, and observers from the United Kingdom, the International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO), and the International Apiculture Organization (APIMONDIA). A. MÉTRO represented the Director-General of FAO, in the unavoidable absence of the Director of the Forestry and Forest Products Division. L. GIMENEZ-QUINTANA acted as Secretary.
J. DE VAISSIÈRE (France) Chairman, assisted by F. KNEBL (Yugoslavia), M. BADRA (Tunisia) and E. ALLEGRI (Italy), presided over the discussions, and in his opening speech he stressed the importance of the influence which FAO's Mediterranean Development Project had had on the work of the subcommission. This project marked, in fact, the transition between two periods of activity by the subcommission - the period of study of the forest as a natural milieu and the period of the idea of the forest as a means of regional development.
Later the subcommission endorsed the Director-General's proposal to set up a committee of experts to advise him on the planning of agricultural and forest development in Mediterranean countries.
At its previous Lisbon session, the subcommission had concluded that the implementation of the Mediterranean Development Project implied that forest policies should be conceived as part of integrated regional economic development plans and be supported by applied research, this too planned with regard to the main economic and social aims in question. It now decided that the following ten research projects had priority:
1. The establishment of pilot watersheds for the quantitative determination of the influence of forest and range management of natural stands on streamflow.2. An economic study of the possibilities of using fodder trees and shrubs in reforestation work and on rangelands.
3. Direct and indirect costs and benefits of forest shelterbelts and windbreaks in semi-arid and arid zones.
4. Selection and improvement, with a view to the production of selected seeds, of stands of Aleppo pine, Pinus brutia, Mediterranean cedars and cypress.
5. Economic soundness of techniques for irrigation, cultivation, and application of fertilizers in eucalyptus stands.
6. Economic soundness of techniques for irrigation, cultivation, and application of fertilizers in poplar plantations.
7. Study of the ecological adaptation of eucalypts.
8. The production of certified eucalyptus seed in the Mediterranean basin, for research projects or for the execution of reforestation programs.
9. The setting up of a network of arboreta of quick-growing species.
10. Biological studies on alfa grass (Stipa or Macrochloa tenacissima and Lygaeum spartum) and studies on the management of alfa lands.
A Mediterranean Forest Research Committee was set up, in agreement with the chairman of IUFRO, to co-ordinate the execution of these projects. This committee was also asked to work out a regional research project related to the development of the resin-tapping industry in the region.
Among other matters dealt with by the subcommission were the financing of forestry programs, grazing problems on forest range, improvement of degraded forests, utilization of small-sized timber, and the collection of basic data for forestry planning.
Watershed management study tour
A study tour on watershed management was organized in Europe during the summer, as a complement to the one held in the United States in 1959, by the Divisions of Forestry and Forest Products and of Land and Water Development, in co-operation with the governments of Austria, France, Federal Republic of Germany, the Netherlands, Italy and Switzerland. The tour, in which more than 40 participants from 20 countries took part, started in Rotterdam on 20 May and ended with a two-day meeting at FAO Headquarters in Rome six weeks later. During the tour, which aimed at acquainting technicians from all parts of the world with the concepts of watershed management as they have developed in Europe and enabling them to study the economic and social aspects of land-use planning, visits were organized to the most important management works and research centers in the six host countries, which supplied the participants with abundant explanatory documentation. Discussion meetings were held at the beginning and the end of each section of the tour.
African wildlife investigation
The role of wildlife in Africa is being investigated by a team on a joint assignment from FAO and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Countries throughout Africa are being visited, on request, by THANE: RINEY (U.S.A.) and PETER HILL (U.K.), with the object of assessing the potential of wildlife resources, both as a source of food and for tourism, determining how this can be developed in relation to other forms of land use, advise African governments on such integrated development and how to train local personnel in the skills required to carry out such plans.
The two experts are now touring countries of East and Central Africa, after having earlier in the year spent several months in countries of West Africa. In May they attended a meeting in Paris of a joint IUCN/FAO advisory committee which is supervising and guiding the project. Two other FAO experts, J. VERSCHUREN (Belgium) and R. N. WATSON (U.K.) are meanwhile at work on the Serengeti plains in Tanganyika carrying out research to obtain accurate knowledge of game animals in their natural habitat.
· In August at Rome, H. L. SHIRLEY, Dean of the College of Forestry, State University of New York, Syracuse, U.S.A., presided over a small meeting of representative members of the FAO Panel on Education in Forestry, drawn from France, Spain and the United Kingdom. The meeting was called to acquaint the group with the rapidly increasing FAO activity in forestry education projects in Latin America, Africa, and the Near East, and to discuss some of the principles that should be followed in carrying out such projects.
