Forestry Timeline - download Forestry Timeline here
The idea for this timeline grew out of an account I wrote in 2004 of the history of the Committee on Forestry, the two-yearly meeting of the member countries of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). My study included a timeline of events in the forestry and related fields since FAO was established in 1945; it was well received by readers.
The present chronology of events in forestry and related sectors has been prepared as a contribution to the 20th anniversary of the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. Its aim is to act as a source of information on the dates of significant events not only in the management and creation of forests but also in their utilisation, and especially in the international conventions and agreements that arose from the meeting in Rio. I am encouraged to offer it to a wider public by the strong interest it aroused in various colleagues to whom I sent the first draft to request their own inputs.
The timeline is offered in digital form on the website of the Commonwealth Forestry Association for the use of individuals, who may download it and add to (or subtract from) it to make their own personal chronology. Readers are, however, encouraged to send in their own additions or subtractions, or amendments, to the author, who will revise it at the end of Rio+20.
The version that is now offered is largely my own, although with several additions from others, and the events I finally selected are those that I think significant. I fear that there are no criteria for their selection beyond my own judgement; at first I thought that I would include only those where I could ascribe a definite date, but this would have omitted several of the early ones.
My chief source was my own recollections and my secondary sources the inputs of others. Recognising that I, and even my colleagues, may have fallible memories, I have checked them as far as possible using the invaluable and gratefully acknowledged resource of Wikipedia. In checking the sources I confess to spending sometimes quite a lot of time chasing wild geese: I learned, for example, about the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the world’s oldest works of literature – see the second entry, c. 2,700 years BP, courtesy of John Innes – as well as the inventors and purpose of the world’s first chain saw (see 1926) who were two 18th century Scottish doctors, who used it for medical “excisions” on their patients. If this timeline starts other readers on similar irrelevant but interesting literature searches then it will have achieved its other purpose, of arousing interest outside the topic.
I have attempted no analysis and drawn no conclusions. The timeline is a work of information only. I realise that it is short in some fields, especially logging and utilisation – I cannot, for example, find a date for the invention or patenting of oriented strand board (OSB), nor for kiln drying of timber.
As well as the incomparable Wikipedia, I gratefully acknowledge significant inputs from the following: Hosny El Lakany, Julian Evans, John Hudson, Juergen Huss, John Innes, Wulf Killmann, Roger Mills, Bob Newman, John Palmer, Peter Savill, Adrian Whiteman and Peter Wood.
Jim Ball President, CFA
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