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Commonwealth
Forests | | |
 Some cases
The School of Agriculture, Rural Development and Forestry of the University of Venda, South
Africa, provides an interesting example of how the term ‘forestry’ is no longer used. Although
present in the title of the school, both the vision statement,
The vision of the School is “To become a ‘Centre of Excellence’ in agriculture, rural
development and natural resources management in the region
and the mission statement,
The main role of the School of Agriculture, Rural Development and Forestry is to provide
professional training to under and post graduate students, providing appropriate knowledge and
skills relevant to the needs of government, private sector and farming community .The school
aims at excellence in teaching, research and active participation in community outreach
programmes in order to promote sustainable livelihoods in rural areas
omit any mention of forestry in the description of what the School does. Instead, the focus is
on some of the critical issues faced by southern Africa, more closely related to poverty
alleviation and resource management than traditional forestry. The University of Stellenbosch,
South Africa, is similar, with their Department of Forest and Wood Sciences (in the Faculty of
AgriSciences) offering undergraduate programmes in Forest and Natural Resource
management and in Wood Products Sciences; again there is no mention of forestry. In another
example, a three-year degree programme in “Sustainable Woodland Management” at the
University of Worcester, England, is described as an Environmental Management degree, and
its aims are described as follows:
The course is designed to teach students to apply their knowledge, derived from aspects of
ecology, physical geography and the underpinning scientific principles, to management of the
natural environment.
These subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) changes in orientation refl etc. the profound
manner in which forestry itself is changing.
Some forestry schools have maintained their connections to the subject. The New Zealand
School of Forestry at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, the Department of Forestry at
the Papua New Guinea University of Technology and the Faculties of Forestry at the University
of British Columbia, Canada, and Universiti Putra Malaysia are examples. Sokoine University
of Agriculture in Morogoro, Tanzania, has a Faculty of Forestry that still contains many of the
Departments that have largely disappeared elsewhere, namely Forest Biology, Forest
Economics, Forest Engineering, Forest Mensuration and Management and Wood Utilization.
However, very few Commonwealth universities have Forestry Faculties that integrate across
the full range of forestry activities, from the forest to the product, and many universities now
only provide education in a part of the range of forestry activities.
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