British forester on working across Africa and the future of the industry

WHAT IS YOUR BACKGROUND?

I started as a forestry worker in the UK and for almost 10 years worked for the Forestry Commission and private estates in the north of England and Scotland. At the age of 28, as a mature student, I went to university and graduated with a major in Hydrology. This led to an opportunity to emigrate to Namibia and start work as a hydrologist for the Namibian Government.

Initially, the work was exciting. Frequent field trips to every part of this vast country meant I got to see spectacular landscapes and exotic wildlife as part of the normal working day. I returned to work as a forester after a couple of years and since then have filled roles as forest manager for the private sector, forestry conservation and development roles in bi- and multi-lateral funded projects in many sub-Saharan countries, and latterly as a certification specialist. I am currently semi-retired.

WHEN DID YOU DECIDE TO PURSUE A CAREER IN FORESTRY AND WHY?
Like many 18-year-olds I left school with no clear career plan. I was an outdoorsy person, I was not afraid of hard work and liked physical challenges. Having lived until then in a large city in the north of England I had no real experience of forests. Yet, the open-air life and prospect of working in some of the most beautiful landscapes must have appealed to me. 

WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST EXPERIENCE OF FOREST WORK? HOW DID YOUR CAREER DEVELOP BEFORE GOING TO UNIVERSITY?
My first experience of forest work was as a forestry worker for one of the better-known management companies in the far north of Scotland. Work was either planting or weeding depending on the season. A succession of similar jobs followed and a broader range of activities including harvesting undertaken.

WHY DID YOU DECIDE TO PURSUE A DEGREE? 
I was young and the physical challenges of forestry work were not a problem. Yet, for several years before going to study I wanted to challenge myself mentally and try to complete a degree – an opportunity that had been denied me at age 18 due to family circumstances. At the time, I was married with two young children and to get the science A levels necessary to study forestry would have meant a hard slog at night school. A compromise was to study geography – a subject I had always done well in and enjoyed.

UPON GRADUATING YOU WERE WORKING AS A HYDROLOGIST IN NAMIBIA. HOW DID YOU GO FROM THERE BACK INTO FORESTRY WORK?
The range of work and tasks for a hydrologist is far fewer than for a forester. This didn't really matter to begin with as I was working in a spectacularly beautiful country and experiencing different people and cultures. In order to progress I would have had to specialise in a particular area of hydrology, and this would have meant far more office-based work and computer modelling. This prospect was not appealing. As a family, we enjoyed living in Africa and had no plans to return to the UK. Before long I was offered several jobs in plantation forestry in southern Africa.

CAN YOU SHARE SOME OF YOUR EXPERIENCES WORKING IN AFRICA?
Until the bi-lateral and multi-lateral lending organisations and conservation NGOs started funding programmes and projects at scale, opportunities for expat foresters in Africa were largely limited to working for European-based companies exploiting tropical hardwoods for export. My entry to African forestry was as a forest manager but in plantation forestry. Over time, opportunities for expats became fewer as foresters were recruited locally and logging began to be dominated by Far Eastern companies. 

The funding agencies broadened opportunities for foresters in a big way. The focus was and still is on protection, conservation and community involvement. The private sector continues to dominate logging. Not only were opportunities widened but many programmes and projects were multi-disciplinary, and foresters found themselves working alongside specialists from other disciplines including agronomists, vets, social scientists, soil scientists, and land-use specialists amongst others.

African forests and adjacent areas are places where people live and work to an extent that has not been seen in Europe for many centuries. People depend on forests for their livelihoods, whether it be clearing forests for cultivation or collecting bush meat, fuelwood, non-timber forest products or construction materials. With rising populations in many African countries, the pressure on forests is not lessening.

Working in Africa brings you into much closer contact with the people than a brief trip or holiday can ever do. What have I learned? Over and above everything is tremendous admiration and respect for people who, under the most difficult circumstances imaginable, continue with their daily routines and live in hope (often based on a profound faith) that things will improve. The most often heard complaint is, “We are suffering,” but there is a resignation that both their own, and external institutions are unlikely to improve their situation very much.

ANY PARTICULARLY MEMORABLE MOMENTS?
It has been a have privilege to have lived and worked in so many African countries. I have worked in a wide range of forest types and settings from the Okoume (Aucoumea klaineana) rich forests in Equatorial Guinea to the Doum palm (Hyphaene thebaica) riparian forests in Eritrea. There have been many memorable moments. 
While there are many countries and forests I haven't experienced in Africa, my award for the most beautiful is the Ethiopian wild coffee forests in the west of the country. Coffee plays a vitally important conservation role. Wild coffee can only thrive under shade and without the presence of coffee the pressure to convert these forests to arable agriculture might become too great.

The most memorable experience was without doubt being on board an aerial photo survey flying over the Doum palm forests in western Eritrea. The aerial survey was going to be used as a tool in the management of these extraordinary forests by the small number of nomadic pastoralists who live in the region. It was almost 30 years ago but the images of flying over these thin ribbons of riverine forest in an environment almost completely devoid of human interference will remain with me for a long time.

There have been hazardous situations from wading across rivers – I was assured the caimans were only small – to crossing rickety bridges but only once have I sensed my life was threatened. The company I worked for in Equatorial Guinea employed a surveyor. One of his tasks was to survey and demarcate concession boundaries. I was with him one day checking his work. He always carried a shotgun to kill bush meat. It became clear the boundaries he had marked were wrong (I later discovered he had done a deal with another company to hand over part of our concession), and when challenged about the boundary I got a strong sense he wanted to shoot me. I quickly realised I needed to get out. 

HOW DOES FORESTRY WORK IN AFRICA DIFFER FROM THE UK?
Working practices and systems in plantation forestry are really no different in Africa compared to the UK except that some activities remain more labour intensive in order to provide employment. Logging in humid tropical forests is on a different scale altogether.

In natural forests that are managed sustainably (many are not), clear-felling is not part of the management strategy. Trees that have reached the minimum dbh as laid down in national regulations are selected for felling. In practice, this usually means only marketable species are logged. Trees can weigh many tens of tonnes and require much heavier handling equipment. 

Many African forests are community-owned. Communities have traditionally harvested timber and non-timber forest products both for subsistence and for sale. Many communities are successfully and sustainably managing their resources, particularly in less humid forests. Exploiting humid tropical forests for timber requires equipment and organisational resources that are beyond the capacity of all but a few communities. Consequently, they are at the mercy of logging companies that regularly exploit them.

WHAT ARE THE STANDOUT BENEFITS OF WORKING IN AFRICAN FORESTRY?
African forests are more diverse, on a much larger scale, contain many thousands of tree and plant species and are mostly lived in and exploited by communities. The benefits for a UK forester who is prepared to listen and learn and who is sensitive to the needs of communities are many. Working with communities to sustainably manage their own resources is highly rewarding. Forests are everything to them. They know the climate is regulated by forests and understand the importance of sustainable management, yet they also have to feed themselves and earn a living, often from exploiting the forest. It is not a dilemma we in the UK face, yet we would also struggle were we to attempt to balance these competing needs.

WHAT IS THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE FACING THE FOREST INDUSTRY, IN YOUR VIEW?
I can only speak of tropical forestry. By now everyone is aware of the critical role forests, and in particular tropical forests, play in regulating the climate. Governments and international lending institutions hold the future of tropical forests in their hands. On the one hand, African governments are desperate for revenue and see logging as a completely justifiable means of generating income. They are often supported and encouraged by the multi-lateral lenders to log forests and there is still a strong international market for tropical timber.

On the other side are the conservationists who witness every day the environmental devastation and social dislocation caused by a logging industry that in the main is poorly regulated and lacking a sufficiently strong commitment to sustainability. National governments and loggers are winning the argument in many parts of Africa as they are in other tropical regions. I have not worked in logging since the mid ’90s. All my work since then has been in conservation. This has given me the opportunity to challenge governments and the logging industry to improve standards and practices. It is an almost futile exercise. Logging lines the pockets of both loggers and the few politicians that benefit hugely from the chaos of uncontrolled exploitation. Sadly, I see no solution.

WHAT WORK ARE YOU CURRENTLY DOING?
I am retired but since returning to the UK I've done a bit of planting on mounds in the north of England to keep fit and occupied, albeit for only short periods. I am seriously thinking of looking for a part-time role in UK forestry.