Nationality United Kingdom Name Gabriel Hemery | Role Author Education University of Oxford | |
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Born December 13, 1968 (age 55) ( 1968-12-13 ) Occupation Forest Scientist, Author Books The New Sylva: A Discourse of Forest and Orchard Trees for the Twenty-First Century | ||
On The Sofa with Gabriel Hemery
Dr Gabriel Hemery (born 13 December 1968) is an English forest scientist (silvologist) and author. He co-founded the Sylva Foundation with Sir Martin Wood, a tree and forestry charity established in 2009.
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Career
He began his career at the Northmoor Trust, now named the Earth Trust, in Oxfordshire. He later became Director of Development for the Botanical Society of the British Isles, returning to forestry to establish the Forestry Horizons think-tank in 2006. He is currently Chief Executive of the Sylva Foundation. He has played an active role in the Institute of Chartered Foresters where he is a Fellow.
During 2011, he co-founded the ginger group Our Forests with other prominent environmentalists, including Jonathon Porritt and Tony Juniper, to provide a voice for the people of England in the future of the country's forests.
With co-author Sarah Simblet he wrote a contemporary version of John Evelyn's Sylva - The New Sylva - published by Bloomsbury in April 2014.
Forestry research
He designed and established a new woodland and centre for hardwood forestry research; Paradise Wood. He was a founding member of the British and Irish Hardwoods Improvement Programme establishing a number of forestry field trials across the UK and Ireland (e.g.). He gained a DPhil degree at the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of Oxford on the genetic improvement of walnut. His research took him to the walnut fruit forests of Kyrgyzstan where he collected thousands of Juglans regia seeds for field trials back in the UK. He then researched and published numerous articles pertaining to the silviculture (e.g.) and genetic improvement of walnut. He initiated an agroforestry research project in the mid-1990s, combining free-range broiler chicken with newly established woodland.