CCFG will be hosting their next webinar – Biomass – Fuel – Silviculture: The role of CCF in fire prevention- with Alex Held – on Thursday 23rd January 2025 4-5.30pm.
Weather permitting, all biomass can become fuel for a wildfire. Fire spread is determined by the fire behaviour influencing factors: weather, topography, and fuels. While we foresters cannot modify weather nor topography, biomass (fuel) we can indeed modify and with this have positive or negative influence on fire spread, fire intensity and its severity and negative effects. CCF is providing a toolbox of silvicultural measures to increase our forests resilience in that regard.
Alexander Held holds an MSc in Forest Science from 
Freiburg University, Germany. He started as a fire ecologist at the Fire Ecology working group of the Max-Planck Society, got a number of operational qualifications in the US and South Africa. He moved from fire ecology to fire management and worked with the Global Fire Monitoring Center GFMC in Europe and Southern Africa. Later, Alex worked with the South African Working on Fire Program, from its early beginnings till 2012, when he joined EFI.
At EFI, Alex works on the current project Waldbrand-Klima-Resilienz, where the exchange of expertise and knowledge, mutual assistance and cooperation in Europe is the tool to create more resilient landscapes and better-informed fire management for Germany. His expertise is in fire management, silviculture and deer management for resilient forests.
See examples of Alex’s work in media here.
To book your place please visit this link.
publishing an important long-term research study on the survival of the Caledonian pinewood by CCFG’s former Chair, Bill Mason will be in their journal 
)
north of Scotland on private estates for Cawdor Forestry Ltd. She has been fortunate to have worked in forests where she has been able to practice CCF, almost exclusively with Scots pine using group selection systems or strip felling. Hazel has learnt that CCF requires a lot of patience and that you don’t always get it right first time! She’s also starting to underplant larch and initiate regeneration of Douglas fir.
years’ experience across a range of jobs and countries. He has managed silvicultural research in the UK and in Somalia, Lesotho, Vanuatu and Guyana covering natural forest through to plantations and temperate to tropical and across a range of different cultural environments. Currently Andrew is part of a team at Forest Research conducting silvicultural and wood properties research, with specific responsibility for CCF, short rotation forestry and species mixtures. For twenty four years he led the development and management of undergraduate and postgraduate degree courses in forestry, delivered through part-time, distance-learning and full-time teaching at the National School of Forestry.
industry since the 1980’s and operated as an independent manager and consultant since 1997, he has considerable experience in a broad range of forestry related issues. David’s client base includes large estates, voluntary organisations, public sector and smaller privately owned woodlands, covering a range of forest and woodland types. David has particular expertise in timber harvesting and marketing. He is a director of SelectFor Ltd and Partner of D&H Pengelly Forestry & Agi-environment Consultants. David is responsible for several properties where owners’ objectives are met through the long-term application of Continuous Cover Forestry principles, resulting in the emergence of well-developed permanently irregular stand structures.
Following the webinar on 23rd May with Victoria Stokes talking about an experiment in underplanting in conifers at Clocaenog Forest, a recording has now been made available on YouTube which 
