Baroness Barbara Young of Old Scone had an impromptu visit to BIFoR-FACE during the 10th Anniversary BIFoR annual meeting.
The Birmingham Institute of Forest Research (BIFoR) held its 10th Anniversary Annual Meeting on the 22-23rd of July.
The meeting was a great success bringing the BIFoR science community together to celebrate both a decade of measurements at the Free Air Carbon Enrichment (FACE) Facility and our wider achievements in forest science. The keynote speaker for the event was the Forestry Commission Chair Baroness Barbara Young of Old Scone who spoke refreshingly candid about what she feels are the latest dilemmas in forest research identified in her first four months into the role. One particular quote that sticks in my mind was "Trees are so valuable that if they didn't exist, we would need to invent them".
Baroness Young, Front and Centre. Photo credit: kris Hart
However, to keep things interesting and the BIFoR team on their toes, Baroness Young made a special request to visit the FACE facility on the morning of her keynote! With the FACE facility being at least an hour from central Birmingham, even on a 'good' traffic day, this presented quite a challenge. After much logistical scrambling, the academic lead for FACE, Prof Sami Ullah, Director Prof. Rob Jackson and Head of Operations Dr Kris Hart managed to herd together a diverse entourage through the woodland experiment that included the UK Chief Plant Officer at DEFRA Nicola Spence CBE and Director of Forest Services at the Forestry Commission Dr Anna Brown.
Baroness Young was impressed with what she saw, and discussions around plant pathogens and mammalian threats to trees was the dominant theme. After a whistlestop tour of the neighbouring private estate that is conducting its own long-term experiments into forestry practices, the Baroness was whisked back to the Edgbaston campus just in time.
