The Council for Forest Research and Development (COFORD) under the chairmanship of Michael Lynn recently established a number of working groups to look at important issues in the sector including promotion of afforestation, wood mobilisation and forecasting, the role of forestry in the bio-economy, forest genetic resources, the performance of mixed species forests and forest policy review.

These are now well under way. The group such as forestry and the bio-economy chaired by Gerard Murphy, for example, aims to determine the potential opportunities for the forest sector within the context of a future Irish bio-economy.

The forest policy review group will seek stakeholders input and “will provide feedback and recommendations on an approach to updating the review’s action plans,” said group chair Donal Whelan. He is a member of the COFORD council and compiled the COFORD Forestry 2030 papers with industry experts available on the COFORD website (www.coford.ie).

ProSilva Ireland is organising a field day in Raheen Forest, Tuamgreany, East Clare on Saturday 8 October to examine continuous cover, or close to nature forestry.

Raheen Forest is situated near the village of Tuamgraney. For more, see the ProSilva website (Google ProSilva Ireland).