Canada
China (Taiwan)
Haiti
Morocco
Spain
United Kingdom
United States of America
· Quebec's pulp and paper industry is expected to have to spend around U.S.$1 million over the next five years in order to reduce water pollution by 50 percent. This is the result of an order by the Provincial Government that water discharge from the mills must contain no more than 3 percent solids in suspension by the end of 1969. Mills are also required to set up a programme of new equipment to be studied and approved by the end of 1970.
The Provincial Government's order followed the results of a survey of water and air pollution in 62 mills carried out by the Quebec Pulp and Paper Association at the request of the province's Water Resources Board.
· China (Taiwan), an island lying 100 kilometres off the coast of Mainland China, has earned for itself a world-wide reputation for the high level in quality and quantity of its agricultural production. Evidence of this reputation is to be found in the growing demand for Chinese to go to other countries and other continents to demonstrate and teach their methods of rice and vegetable growing. It would be difficult to find a better example of what can be achieved by combining the skills and intelligence of a hardworking farming people with the results of years of painstaking and sophisticated scientific work on plant breeding.
Would that it were possible to record a similar impact of tree breeding on the considerable forestry programme to which China (Taiwan) is committed; but, as in many countries, tree breeding for forestry lags well behind plant breeding for farming. Yet this very feet - that forestry is backward in this respect as compared to its sister industry of farming-- is not only a stimulus to Chinese foresters but also a challenging opportunity to forest geneticists and silviculturists in other countries who are perhaps looking for an environment that is new and interesting in which to expand their work and gain fresh experience. In this respect China (Taiwan) is wide open.
A beginning however has been made on a programme of tree improvement. For the past 3 1/2 years or so a project has been under way, sponsored and financed jointly by China (Taiwan) and the 'United Nations Development Programme, aimed at the long-term development of forestry and forest industries, and for 2 1/2 years a relatively small part of this large project has been concerned with planning a tree breeding project and initiating the first steps in implementing it. It was no easy matter to decide where to begin and in what direction to guide the work. Important considerations were the practical difficulties in a steeply mountainous and rugged country with few access routes for even locating the best stands of native species and also the need to select techniques which could be easily taught and which would quickly show results to the Chinese foresters and forest workers. It was finally decided to select superior or plus phenotypes of five native species, namely Pinus taiwanensis, Cunninghamia konishii, Chamaecyparis formosensis, C. taiwanensis and Taiwania cryptomerioides, and of two exotic species, Pinus luchuensis from the Ryukyu Islands and P. elliottii from the United States and, by grafting scion material on to specially grown rootstock, to establish seed orchards or vegetative seed production areas. By end spring 1969, these were established over 7 hectares for Pinus taiwanensis, P. elliottii and Cunninghamia konishii, and grafts were made early in 1969 which should provide plants for another 5 hectares of these species.
This is no mean achievement but it is not a story of steady success. Grafts have failed; there has been too high an incident of topophysis in Cunninghamia konishii; an unexpected mould developed on bamboo supports for 1968 grafts of Pinus taiwanensis and in less than one week this mould wiped out 40 percent of the healthy grafts. But these very failures have taught their lessons and, in spite of them, healthy well-stocked seed orchards can now be seen and are a real encouragement for the future.
Of course, if nothing else is done, these seed orchards must be carefully tended or all the work to-date will be wasted, but Chinese foresters are fully alive to what is needed and are keenly interested to see the orchards developed properly. But what is important for the future is that the long-term programme which has been prepared should be methodically and steadily followed through, with enough flexibility to modify the programme in the light of experience in China (Taiwan) and the latest developments in other countries. While Chinese foresters and research workers have made a good beginning in acquiring techniques and although they can keep abreast of world literature, there is no doubt they would be greatly helped if there could 'be established a firm link with a research institute or university in another country working mainly on applied research in this field. The object would be to undertake jointly the tree improvement programme in China (Taiwan), to exchange staff and arrange fellowships, seminars and so on.
The importance of tree breeding may be judged by considering the forestry programme in general. The forests of China (Taiwan), which cover over 50 percent of the land surface, are mostly owned nationally and managed by the Taiwan Forestry Bureau. Though the national forests extend to about 2.2 million hectares, only some 800 000 hectares can at present be looked upon as suitable for development commercially; the rest is in such and remote country as to be unworkable. But to bring even these 800 000 hectares up to something like their full potential is no mean task. At present these forests are yielding, under old natural conifer and mixed tropical hardwood, perhaps one fifth of what they might, and the long-term objective is to convert them to plantations and so raise the productivity.
The present rate of reforestation on the national forests is running at some 12 000 hectares a year, which should be increased steadily over the next few years. Little work has been done as yet to determine what are the best species for this planting programme - best from a silvicultural and commercial point of view. Are indigenous hardwood and coniferous species to be preferred to exotic species? Can indigenous species be improved ? What strains of exotic species best suit Taiwan ? How can supplies of seed of selected strains be assured ? These and many other silvicultural and genetical problems face the forest managers. It must not be thought that no research or field trials have been carried out. There are able research workers at the Taiwan Forest Research Institute and at the two universities which teach forestry, but a new impetus and inspiration needs to be given so that research becomes sufficiently dynamic yet practical to be the base on which the whole forestry programme can be-but as yet is not -founded. A partnership between research in China (Taiwan), and a more advanced institute or faculty in another country could achieve just this.
· News of forestry activities in Haiti is seldom received, though the need for reforestation and erosion control programmes is evident to all visitors, especially in view of the destruction caused by three hurricanes during the last eight years. A United Nations Development Programme (Special Fund) project for agricultural surveys and extension based on Les Cayes has an FAO forester recruited from Luxembourg included in the team who has assisted in establishing a nursery and gaining the interest of the local people in tree planting.
Food assistance for participants in reforestation and erosion control operations is being provided by the World Food Programme, and the French National Freedom from Hunger Campaign Committee has donated $16,000 for the purchase of seeds and simple forestry hand tools. Leading articles in newspapers give prominence to the need to check erosion by protecting natural forest resources, and the President of the Republic announced in January 1969 the formation of a National Reforestation Committee with representatives from the ministries of agriculture, education, planning and development to plan and coordinate a national reforestation crusade.
· The Royal Forestry School at Sale, originally established in 1948 to train forest guards and rangers, is now being enlarged to train the intermediate-level forest engineers needed to implement the national programme of reforestation and soil and water conservation.
Establishment of facilities and the development of the curriculum are being carried out with the assistance of the UNDP (Special Fund) under a recently initiated project for which FAO is the executing agency. UNDP is providing close to U.S.$1 million for the provision of lecturers, fellow ships and equipment over a period of five years, after which all teaching activities will be taken over by Moroccan counterparts.
The new intermediate-level forest engineering course will have a duration of two years, and will cater for an annual intake of 30 students. Moroccan students will be selected from those with two years of successful studies at the Meknès National Agricultural School, and the course will also be open to similarly qualified students from Algeria and Tunisia. The FAO project manager is M. Badra (Tunisia).
· Spain's afforestation programme, which has brought about a 20 percent increase in the country's forested area in the past 30 years, is being compromised by an increasing rate of loss through forest fires. The seriousness of the situation is well illustrated by the fact that, over the past six years, forest fires have destroyed 1 hectare for every 4 hectares afforested.
The Government has taken steps to overcome the problem by introducing broad legislation which covers not only prevention and control of forest fires but also restitution for the losses entailed.
General development of forest fire services is to be accompanied by the investigation and analysis of causes, establishment of safety regulations for forest operations, determination of fire risk indicators governing limitations on forest work that can be carried out under given atmospheric conditions, determination of firebreak requirements and standards of forest hygiene, development of fire control equipment, and education of the public. Studies will be made to identify high risk zones where special preventive measures will be mandatory, whether the forest be state or privately owned.
On the control and suppression of forest fires, the new legislation spells out the duties and obligations of private citizens and local authorities. It clearly defines the chain of command and the powers at the disposal of the various authorities, which include conscription of firefighters, requisitioning of materials and the right to cut firebreaks or light counter fires on private land.
To provide the means for restitution of losses the legislation establishes a forest fire compensation fund, financed by the state forest service, public authorities and corporations owning forest land, and private forest owners. Apart from compensating the forest owner for loss of growing stock and other damage, the fund will also be used to pay the costs of fire-fighting and to cover losses incurred by fire fighters and others involved. Emphasis is placed on rehabilitation of the forests destroyed, and private owners will receive material and technical assistance from the forest service.
· The traditional English unit of timber volume, which was in common use by the 16th century and later called the Hoppus foot, is to go. The Forestry Commission has decided that British forestry will go metric :in February 1971 when decimal currency is introduced into the United :Kingdom. The Hoppus foot will then be replaced by the cubic meter.
The old English unit came into being to estimate the amount of useful wood in a tree, after the wastage had been squared off. The formula for arriving at this is: mea sure the girth of the tree in inches :half way up the tree, divide this by -four, square the result, multiply by the useful length of the bole in feet, and then divide by 144, and out comes the answer in Hoppus feet. The Hoppus foot was named after a certain Edward Hoppus, an insurance agent, who produced a set of tables in 1738 to try to clarify the problem of estimating the volume of standing timber.
· The President of the International Union of Forestry Research Organizations, George M. Jemison, has announced that the 15th IUFRO Congress will be held at the University of Florida, in Gainesville, Florida, 14-20 March 1971. Meetings will be preceded by a special tour of :Florida, and six technical tours, each of about one week's duration, are planned after the Congress.
