
That’s more than 25 rings that have been added to the cedar tree in front of Pierroton Castle since the IEFC’s founding fathers filed its articles of association. It’s been a bumpy ride, which has seen the IEFC go through its paces with the partnership to host the EFIATLANTIC and then EFIPLANT regional offices, which came to an end in 2019. Since 2020, the network and the team have continued to expand, with planted forests at the heart of many issues such as the bioeconomy, forest sequestration and ecosystem restoration. It is therefore logical that the strategy of this multi-stakeholder network aimed at facilitating the exchange of knowledge between professionals and scientists on the sustainable management and resilience of planted forests in a context of global change should attract new members.


The day began in Scotland at the offices of Forest-Research, a member and sponsor of the IEFC, with a presentation by James Pendlebury on the issues associated with species diversification in the UK, followed by a look at the initiatives put in place to encourage foresters to diversify their forest itineraries. This was followed by a number of presentations on planted forests: “First results from REINFFORCE – 10 years monitoring”, Christophe Orazio, Lucas Moreews, IEFC, “The role of planted forests and blended finance as part of largescale forest landscape restoration projects which have communities at their centre”, Andrew Heald, Inovaland, “Applying the bocage concept to plantation landscapes”, Hervé Jactel INRAe, “Climate-smart management of planted forests in Latvia”, Dr. Koenig, INRAe. Āris Jansons and Pauls Zeltiņš, Latvian State Forest Research Institute “Silava”, “An Open Database of Tree Pulling Experiments for Wind Damage” Research, Barry Gardiner, IEFC, “Forest management carbon projects for the European voluntary market: SMURF and Eco2for projects”, Tomàs Sanchez Pellicer, CESEFOR.
The general meeting proper then got underway, and the president was able to take stock of all the initiatives undertaken by the IEFC, concluding that most of the subjects identified as priorities in the establishment’s new strategy were well on the way to being covered, with a slight downside concerning the analysis of trade-offs between ecosystem services. She was pleased to see that new members from northern and eastern Europe had joined the association.
In addition to highlighting a number of emblematic projects for the year 2023 (more than 12 projects in progress), this event provided an opportunity to present the networking activities offered by the IEFC to its members, with in particular reports on exchanges supported by the IEFC’s internal cooperation fund: student participation in Woodrise, exchanges between French and English forest tree improvers, rehabilitation of a Portuguese REINFFORCE arboretum. Other networking activities, in particular with the IUFRO and the EFI, were also presented. It was pointed out that the IEFC was responsible for organising two major European and global events: the International Congress on Planted Forest organised in Nairobi, Kenya, and Global challenges and Innovative management of bark and wood borers in planted and natural forests, August 2023, Bordeaux/Cestas, France. Events scheduled for 2024 can be viewed online here.
Suzanne Afanou, the IEFC’s communications manager, showed that the IEFC’s new visual identity and the renaming of the website to plantedforests.org had resulted in greater traffic and a higher profile for our organisation, both among professionals and on social networks. She also noted a significant increase in the number of subscribers to the newsletter, with the latest satisfaction survey on the content published being very positive.
The day concluded with a presentation by the GIP-ECOFOR on the development of European funding and a discussion on the development of the infrastructures maintained by the IEFC, in particular to try to pool the reporting of damage observed on forest trees with a tool such as silvalert: https://silvalert.net/
Presentations are available to IEFC members: https://www.plantedforests.org/iefc-general-assembly-2024/presentations/
The full minutes of the meeting, which serve as the annual report, can be downloaded here: https://www.plantedforests.org/general-assembly/
Christophe Orazio, Director of the IEFC