Presented by Claire Howell, ABARES , Thursday 15th May 2014.
Australia’s diverse and extensive forests are recognised for their unique biodiversity, for their cultural heritage, and for the provision of goods and services such as wood, carbon sequestration, and soil and water protection. Australia’s State of the Forests Report 2013 (SOFR 2013) consolidates the best available economic, social and ecological data about Australia’s forests and the communities that depend on them, and presents an invaluable source of information for policy makers, planners, forest managers, researchers and forest industry analysts.
SOFR 2013 is the fourth in the five-yearly series of national State of the Forests Reports, and represents the joint effort of the Australian Government and state and territory governments to fully describe Australia’s forests. It is a key tool in identifying national trends relating to Australia’s forests, forest conservation and the forest industry. Claire will provide an overview of the key findings of SOFR 2013.
Presenter:
Claire Howell manages Australia’s National Forest Inventory within the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences, in the Australian Government Department of Agriculture. Claire has worked with the National Forest Inventory in several roles since joining the Bureau, and completed the first report of the National Plantation Inventory in 1997. She has been involved in the preparation of all four of Australia’s five-yearly State of the Forests Reports (1998, 2003, 2008 and 2013). Claire is Australia’s representative on the Technical Advisory Committee to the Montréal Process Working Group, which includes eleven other member countries, and is Australia’s National Correspondent to the FAO Global Forest Resources Assessment. In 2010, Claire was awarded the ACT Forester of the Year for her contribution to the development and implementation of Australia’s sustainable forest management reporting processes both domestically and internationally. Claire has a Bachelor of Forest Science from the University of Melbourne.