Nominations open for the Prince of Wales Award for Sustainable Forestry

The Institute of Foresters of Australia is calling for nominations for, His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales Sustainable Forestry Award for 2018.

‘It is about forests and foresters’, said Mr Rob de Fégely, Vice-President of the Institute of Foresters of Australia and Director responsible for international relations.

‘His Royal Highness has a well-known passion for forests and natural production systems. In recent years, he has provided support to the professional forestry institutes in Australia and New Zealand and prior to that in Canada and United Kingdom.

‘His Royal Highness wants to encourage greater awareness of the importance of sustainably managing the world’s forests and training and creating a network of young foresters who will manage them professionally.

‘Forestry is about long term thinking and planning and the stability of his leadership should inspire many younger members of our profession to join his quest to sustainably managing the worlds’ forests.

‘We are fortunate to have such a prominent person as the Prince of Wales encouraging our profession and taking such a keen interest in forest management.

‘It is critically important that we continue to train professional forest managers who have the broad range of skills that early foresters were trained for to manage our forests for production or conservation purposes. To rely on people with only specialist skills such as ecologists or botanists would be like trying to manage our health system without the General Practitioners’, said Mr de Fégely.

The Australian and New Zealand winners of the Prince of Wales awards in 2017, Jesse Mahoney and Alfred Duval met with His Royal Highness at the IFA roundtable. (see image)

Mr de Fégely said, ‘This Prince of Wales award for sustainable forestry is to encourage engagement in and dedication to, the principles of sustainable forest management including policy, planning and practice and sound science-based land stewardship’.

Awardees must be committed to public outreach and knowledge exchange, focusing on the wise use and conservation of forests and the ecosystems that they encompass.

Eligible recipients must either be a student or recent graduate and up to 30 years of age from a forestry, natural resources or environmental science university or college program, who have made outstanding contributions to their school and program, and to forest professionalism in general, within their community.

 Recipients must be members in good standing of their respective Institutes, thus demonstrating their personal commitment to lifelong continuing education and professional development, and their support of forest professionalism.

Nominations close 30 June 2018 - www.forestry.org.au/honours-awards-scholarships/220-prince-of-wales-award-for-sustainable-forestry