The Natural Resources Institute (NRI) in Chatham, formerly part of ODA, was sold off to the university sector on 1 May 1996.
It is now part of the University of Greenwich. Subsequently a part of the old NRI has been separated off as a limited company - NRlnternational - owned by a consortium of the Universities of Greenwich, Edinburgh, Imperial and Wye College. NRI provide the secretariat to the UK Tropical Forest Forum.
Peter Kanowski, stalwart of the Oxford Forestry Institute Msc Forestry Programme, has moved back to Australia where he is now Professor of Forestry in Canberra. We wish him well.
Simon Counsell, for many years the Friends of the Earth rainforest campaigner, has recently completed his MSc at the Oxford Forestry institute, and has taken up the role of Campaigns Coordinator for the Rainforest Foundation.
The Rural Development Forestry Network at the Overseas Development Institute will be moving soon. From the end of October 1996 they will be based
in Portland House, Victoria, close to ODA.
Professor Charles Stirton, currently Deputy Director of Kew Gardens, is leaving to spearhead the development of the new national botanic garden for Wales to be constructed at Middleton Hall, near Carmarthan in South Wales.
The ODA Forestry Research Programme which allocates over £2.5 million a year to research on forests will have new management from April 1997, when it transfers from the Oxford Forestry Institute to Natural Resources International in Chatham.
This was a result of a competitive tender process. The Programme has a strategic focus on 11 "purposes" within four production systems relevant to forests - semi-arid, hillside, tropical moist forest, and forest- agriculture interface.
The "purposes" are broadly defined and range from sustainable management of tropical moist forest to biodiversity of the forest-agriculture interface.