Sylva Foundation is one of a number of organisations that have been working closely with government to support innovation and action promoting tree health. Earlier this week, our CEO Dr Gabriel Hemery spoke at a government stakeholder event about one of these innovations, Forest Lab.
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has developed a plan which identifies plant health research and development needs and outlines government’s approach to delivering these over the next 5 years, from 2023 to 2028.
Some £6 million has been devoted to this crucially important work which aims to:
- enhance our understanding and knowledge of plant health issues and solutions to protect us from threats
- provide evidence on which to develop risk-based policy approaches, and to enable our delivery partners and practitioners to make robust decisions and take action
- develop and deploy innovation and new technologies in support of our plant health policy objectives
- provide world class plant health research capability
Some of the work Sylva Foundation has been engaged with has been behind the scenes and out of the public eye, such as supporting the development of the new Tree Health Pilot grant scheme. More recently, Sylva has begun working with Forest Research to develop a new ‘stewardship science’ capability, aiming to enable two-way engagement between land owners and scientists to support resilient forests. The outcomes of this work are not yet live but we will be announcing details in the near future. Sylva CEO Dr Gabriel Hemery outlined the concept of Forest Lab to the audience of government policy makers and fellow scientists.
