Dear members of the IUFRO DIVISION 7 (FOREST HEALTH) community Many (we wish more) of you are with us at the IUFRO World Conference in Seoul. From our perspective, this is a historic event in bringing together more scientists working in the field of TREE HEALTH than ever before at a IUFRO World Congress. The programme is jam packed with technical sessions dealing with Air Pollution, Climate Change, Insect Pests and Diseases. I hope that we can do the same OR BETTER at our next World Congress in FOUR YEARS time. For those of you who are attending the conference - please try to attend our business meeting at 18h30 on Friday evening in room E6. Open to everyone who works in the field of tree health. Sometimes people become confused as to whether they are part of the IUFRO community. This is easy - if you attend IUFRO Working Party meetings - you are one of the club. And if you are at the World Congress and work in the field of Tree Health (Divsion 7), we would love to have you attend the business meeting and have your views on building better networks. Some of you will know that I will step down as Co-ordinator of Division 7 as of the end of this meeting. Thus, at the Business Meeting, I will be handing over to Sandy Liebhold and he will introduce the new leaders (Co-ordinators) of the three Research Groups (7.1-Air Pollution and Climate Change, 7.2- Pathology and 7.3 - Entomology). These are Andrzej Bytnerowicz, Jolanda Roux and Ecki Brokerhoff.. in that order. They become the Deputy Co-ordinators of the Division and also members of the Enlarged IUFRO Board. I will also have the opportunity to THANK Naoto Kamata, Jean-Claude Gregoire and Kevin Percy for acting as Division Deputies. Also to thank Elena Paoletti, Gaston La Flamme and Sandy Liebhold for being a fantastic source of support during the last five years and for doing a superb job to build the Division to one of the strongest and most dynamic in IUFRO. Particularly for those of you that are not able to attend the meeting, I have compiled a short report capturing highlights of the past five years and giving some perspectives as to what lies ahead. I am attaching the report to this note (it is also at <http://www.iufro.org/download/file/5821/2798/iufro7__BUSINESS_MEETING_2010. doc/> http://www.iufro.org/download/file/5821/2798/iufro7__BUSINESS_MEETING_2010.d oc/ With very best wishes Mike Wingfield _____ Michael J. Wingfield (Ph.D., FRSAF, ASSAf) Mondi Professor of Forest Protection Director, Forestry and Agricultural Biotechnology Institute (FABI); Tree Protection Co-operative Programme (TPCP) & DST/NRF Centre of Excellence in Tree Health Biotechnology (CTHB) University of Pretoria, PRETORIA 0002, South Africa Phone (office): +27 12 420 3938 Fax (office): +27 12 420 3960 E-mail: <mailto:mike.wingfield@fabi.up.ac.za> mike.wingfield(a)fabi.up.ac.za WEBSITE: http://www.fabinet.up.ac.za/people/mjwingfield _____