merrion street

Shane McEntee, TD, Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine with responsibility for forestry, today launched the Society of Irish Foresters online resource ‘

’ in Wexford.

The Society of Irish Foresters, founded in 1942, is the representative body for the forestry profession in Ireland and focuses on the dissemination of scientific forestry knowledge and best forestry practice through its journal ‘Irish Forestry’ and its newsletter ‘The Irish Forester’. As part of its Continuous Professional Development programme, the Society has made the entire collection of its ‘Irish Forestry’ journal from 1943 to 2009 available on its website, free of charge and easily accessible to the widest possible audience. The scanning project was partly supported by the Forest Service of the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine.

Welcoming the initiative by the Society of Irish Foresters, Minister McEntee commented, "It will be an invaluable resource to an industry that makes such an important contribution to our economy – estimated at €2.2 billion in 2010 - and that depends to such a great extent on the advice and services of professional foresters. As we all know, the internet has given us ready access to all kinds of reference material and it is appropriate that, with the completion of this scanning project, the store of knowledge in the ‘Irish Forestry’ journals down through the years is now also readily accessible".

Speaking at the offices of Datagroup in Wexford, the company that conducted the electronic scanning work on the project, the Minister praised the efforts of all involved in making this archive of forestry information available to the forestry profession, students, researchers, the forestry industry as a whole and to the general public.