Dr Hans Drielsma AM – Chair of the IFA NW Jolly Award Committee, Bob Gordon National President of the IFA and Rob de Fegely.
Margules Groome Consulting’s Rob de Fegely has been awarded the NW Jolly Medal for his services to the Australian forest industry at an Australian and New Zealand Institute of Forestry conference in Christchurch. Source: Timberbiz
Mr de Fegely is also chairman of Sustainable Timber Tasmania and Co-Chair of the Commonwealth Governments Forest Industry Advisory Council.
The NW Jolly Medal is the Institute of Foresters of Australia’s highest and most prestigious award for outstanding service to forestry in Australia. It is named after Norman W Jolly who was the first Australian to be trained as a forester at Oxford University in 1904.
In accepting the award Mr de Fegely said he was deeply honoured to have been recognised by his peers for his services to forestry in Australia.
“I started my first job as a forester in Bombala in March 1980 developing pine plantations on old farmland and I am very appreciative of the lessons I learned working in the Bombala community for nearly nine years,’’ Mr de Fegely said.
“In addition to my normal job, I had the honour of being the project manager developing the Bicentennial Gardens which was a great community effort and is now a wonderful asset in the middle of the town along the river.
“Since my time in Bombala my career has taken me to Canberra, Queanbeyan and Melbourne before returning the Far South Coast. I have had the opportunity to work on projects for both government and private clients in every state of Australia and overseas in Asia and North America which has been a wonderful experience,” he said.
“I also owe a great deal to my early mentors Prof Lindsay Pryor (NW Jolly medallist – 1971), Ray Margules and John Groome and I have also learnt a huge amount from my many clients over the years.”
Mr de Fegely said Australia had a very positive future in the forest industry.
Not only was Australia the seventh most forested country in the world but on per capita basis the country had more forest per person than every other country except for Canada.
“Sadly, though we are still a net importer of forest products importing around 60 thousand cubic metres per annum of sawn hardwood and 740 thousand cubic metres per annum of softwood and some of this timber is coming from forests that are not as well managed as ours in Australia,” Mr de Fegely said.
“So, Australia should be doing more and as wood is the ultimate renewable product it will play a very important role in meeting the challenges of sustainably feeding, clothing and housing the 10 billion people that will be living on our planet by 2050.”
