FINLAND, Ecuador, Indonesia, and New Zealand – all destinations this year’s successful Royal Forestry Society (RFS) Randle Bursary recipients are hoping to visit to enhance their forestry knowledge.

Consultant Bryan Elliot is aiming to go to an ecological island at Maungatautari, New Zealand, to find out how removing all mammals has developed a safe environment for some of New Zealand’s most endangered species.

Joe Elliot from Askham Bryan College has visited Carbofex in Tampere, Finland, to research biochar production processes as part of a project on how managing forests in Scotland could make commercial-scale biochar production a possibility in the UK.

Karen Batten from Bangor University is hoping to take up an internship focusing on climate change mitigation, agroforestry and forest conservation in Ecuador, organised by Amazon Learning, to investigate and collect data for her dissertation.

Mat Curtis, also from Bangor University, is aiming to head to Indonesia to research the East India Screw Tree as part of his MSc dissertation. He will investigate whether this tree could become part of the livelihood systems of poor rural farmers as a component of their agroforestry systems or grown as tree crops.

Due to COVID-19 restrictions, the recipients will be able to extend travel into 2021.

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