Bangor Forestry Student Association and Woodland Heritage Present: 'Protecting our trees and forests from pests and diseases - is it possible? A guest lecture by Dr Hugh Williams, Forestry Commission and WH trustee
Bangor Forestry Student’s Association (BFSA) is proud to have partnered with Woodland Heritage to present an exciting guest lecture by Hugh Williams, the Plant Health Forestry Principal Policy Advisor for the Forestry Commission. This promises to be a fascinating talk, giving us a view from the front lines on the current situation of tree health in the UK.
The talk will take place online at 7pm on Tuesday 8th March; you can join by clicking on the Teams meeting link and we look forward to seeing many of you there.
About the Speaker:
Originally a geographer, Hugh studied for a MSc in Environmental Forestry at Bangor having been convinced of the value of trees whilst living in Japan. He then worked as a Forest Officer in Norfolk before starting his PhD in the remote sensing of forest biomass. These studies took him to France, Malaysia, Chad and Thetford. Upon graduation, Hugh joined a forestry consultancy firm and worked in woodland creation and management projects across the South East of England. He joined the National Forest Company in 1997 and was responsible for large scale woodland creation (over 4,000 hectares in 10 years), land acquisition (including planting the largest walnut wood in the UK), significant investments in woodland businesses and the establishment of the National Forest Wood Fair. In 2007 he joined Forest Research managing the external income, communications, property and forest based teams. He also worked with fellow Board members on issues such as the policy and actions to devolution and organisational change. He joined Surrey Wildlife Trust in 2018 where he led the Trusts programme of management to ash dieback, and the operational works at Norbury Park – arguably the first time that any charity had publicly recognised – and acted upon - the challenges of ash dieback. He rejoined the Forestry Commission as a Woodland Officer, before managing the Forestry Commission’s components of the Countryside Stewardship scheme. Hugh was appointed as the FC’s Plant Health Forestry Principal Policy Advisor in 2020. Hugh is a trustee of Woodland Heritage, a Director of Whitney sawmills, owns 3 chainsaws and manages a few woodlands for private clients.