nurturing a wood culture, growing a future
Sylva’s CEO, Dr Gabriel Hemery, has been promoted to Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Foresters (ICF). Gabriel has been active in the ICF, being technical co-ordinator for a national conference and writing the proceedings for three of them (2008, 2009 and 2010). He has acted as examiner for professional membership examinations for a number…
This week we have been meeting people who make a living in the forestry sector at Europe’s largest exhibition: APF 2010. The exhibition is held every two years, and this year was held at Cannock Chase in Staffordshire. We are grateful to our main partner in the myForest Service, ConFor, for allowing us to share…
Children of Bladon C of E Primary School recently travelled to the Weald Wood Fair in East Sussex to receive their first prize in the Excellence in forestry awards from the Royal Forestry Society. The school were awarded the prestigious prize for their work in the OneOak project with the Sylva Foundation during 2009 and…
We are delighted to report that about 50 young oak seedlings have been raised successfully by Nicholsons, ready to be planted at the OneOak site this coming Winter. If you have been following the story about the seeds so far, you will know that the OneOak tree did not produce any viable seeds in the…
Our pilot of the TreeWatch initiative has been progressing well over the summer. About 50 horse chestnut trees have been adopted and surveyed across the UK, and one in the south of France. Volunteers from the Tree Council and EarthWatch have been asked to help us develop and test the website, and to tell us…
We are looking forward to exhibiting at the APF 2010 show between 23-25 September. The APF is the forest industry’s showcase and typically attracts over 15,000 visitors. Read more. With thanks to our partners ConFor for allowing us to share their stand (Stand I 1&2 – next to the PoleClimbing) to jointly promote the myForest…
In May we launched an online competition to Guess the Weight of the OneOak tree – read more. The competition closed at the end of August and we have one lucky winner who will receive a beautiful hand-carved bowl, made by master craftsman Martin Damen (see Martin Damen’s website). The winning answer of 14.662 tonnes…
Today a major milestone was met by our myForest Service when the area of woodlands mapped exceeded 3000 hectares across the country. This represents only a small proportion of woodlands in Britain (about 0.1% of the 3 million hectares of forest) but this is a promising sign that the service is viewed as a valuable…
Ed Coate is working with the Sylva Foundation and the Oxfordshire Woodland Project to deliver the Southern Oxfordshire LEADER project. The project is aiming to enhance the forestry sector in Southern Oxfordshire and has been supported by a LEADER grant. Read more about the project Ed has an extensive background in woodland and land management,…
The bowl hand carved by master craftsman Martin Damen is nearing completion. The bowl is one of the first items to be made from the OneOak tree. Martin has generously donated the bowl as first prize in our competition this summer. Carving is now complete but the bowl must finish is naturally drying process before…
