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.
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