UTGA NEWSwww.utga.ug

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Growers Discuss Utilisation of Thinning

18th March 2013

UTGA/SPGS invited Clients and Growers

to participate at a demonstration forest day for “Utilisation of Thinnings” at the plantation of Mr. Robert Bariho in Mpigi. The SulkyThe first stop was to look at extraction equipment (log sulky) working on the sloping terrain in the plantation. To improve on the

UTGA FOREST DAY IN MPIGI

efficiency for extraction the Growers will need to go over to mechanised methods of extraction already at 2nd thinnings. The logs are heavy and a large number of workers

are needed to complete the job in a time efficient manner. Several of the Growers have shown an interest in the sulky and since the equipment can be produced locally here in Uganda, it is anticipated that they will become a common tool in most forest harvesting operations in the near future. The WoodmiserThe second stop of the day was at the sawmill site in the forest

UTGA AGMDATE; Tuesday 26/3/2013VENUE: City Royal HotelTIME: 7am to 1pmPlease keep time

These planks of wood don’t have to be isolated as wastage

The woodmiser cuts of the top

The conversion contractor talks to planters about the details of the operation

Using a sulky to extract wood from the forest

IN cASE OF A FIRE

World Forestry DayNFA MEETING WITh cIvIl SOcIETY ORGANIzATIONS (cSOS)

8. Ensure that employees fight fires in small teams

and not alone so that they help and look after each other

9. Avoid working under power lines for they might

short circuit to the ground (through the smoke) without actual contact.

10 Be aware of any fire hazards in the local area

eg gas tanks, land mines, wild animals such as buffaloes etc

11. Always used trained fire fighters for

productivity and efficiency

12. Park your vehicle in a safe spot

13. Ensure that your instructions are clear

so that everybody works safely and towards the same objective.

14 Don’t panic – keep calm and make logical deci-

sions

On 5th March,2013 UTGA joined Civil Society Orga-nizations (CSOs) in an urgent meeting called at NFA

headquarters with the view of finding ways and means of meeting goals set to be achieved.According to the authority “We cannot continue to work in isolation and so we need to bridge the gap between us and the private sector”. The major objective was to have an open dialogue with Civil Society Organizations and get views on how to galvanise the forestry sector by finding ways to tackle encroachment, have the ban on land allocations lifted and carry out boundary demarcation.The committee to handle this was led by Mr. Ponsiano Besesa and Hon. David Ebongo who sit on the NFA Board. It was agreed that as part of information sharing, the report findings be shared with the participants so as to gauge any ligation prospects. There is need for a pool of technical and financial assistance and NFA was advised to name an advo-cacy officer who would be the link with other organizations.The committee was tasked to approach other CSOs and to also approach the Parliamentary Natural Resources Commit-tee for guidance on policy. The next meeting is tentatively scheduled for 26th/March/2013.

Continued from last week

NOTICEUTGA Annual General Meeting 2013

Tuesday, 26th March, 2013 City Royal Hotel Bugolobi, Kampala 07:30am 01:10pm.

5th March 2013

By order of Board

NB: ATTENDANCE IS STRICTLY LIMITED TO THOSE MEMBERS WHO WILL HAVE PAID UP FOR 2013

The concept of having a World Forestry Day (WFD) originated at the 23rd General

Assembly of the European Confederation of Agriculture in 1971. WFD is one of the world’s leading global platforms for people with an inter-est in forests and climate change to share their views and work togetherA forest, which we usually think of in terms of trees, is in fact a complex, living commu-nity. Beneath the forest canopy dwell inter-dependent populations of plants and animals, while the soil that forms the forest floor contains a large variety of invertebrates, bac-teria and fungi which play an essential role in cycling nutrients in the soil and the forest.Let´s celebrate the World Forestry Day on Thursday, 21st of March, this day commem-orates the contribution and value of forests and forestry to the community.

Continued from page 1

All encroachers who have been occupying large

tractThe UTGA office would like to urge and strongly en-courage all growers in Kisom-bwa Central Forest Reserve in Mubende to use this chance to plant as much as they can. The NFA has assured us that they have 24hr police presence on the ground in the CFR.

GROWERS IN KISOMBWA cFR

Dear members;In regards to the forestry silvi-

cultural calendar, all those planning to plant this rainy season should by now be done with ground prepara-tions i.e. initial or bush clearing, lining pot, pitting and pre-spraying as well as keeping in touch with your certified nursery operators for quality planting materials.UTGA reminds you to put emphasis on time management when it comes to the implementation of all planned commercial forestry activities. Do your booking from only certified/recommended nurseries. Visit the UTGA & SPGS websites

Good luck, UTGA office.

where a Wood-Mizer LT40 mobile sawmill was converting logs from the second thinning into sawn timber. The forest owner informed the participants that his expectations for returns from the conversion of thinnings into sawn timber had not been met. Many of the logs were of poor quality and the small dimensions required considerable effort and time on the saw bench to produce a single piece of 2” x 4” of 4 meters length. The harvesting operations were hampered by steep terrain and the movement of heavy logs. Poor seed had produced many trees that were of poor form and many of these logs were sold or even given to the furniture makers. The Members made a

UTGA Forest Day In Mpigi

point that UTGA needed to get active on finding a suitable market for forest products.The Growers got to see the saw mill in operation and saw the amount of waste that was produced in the process. UTGA will make an effort to identify new service providers with equipment that is suitable for the conversion of both thinnings and logs from the final harvest.

Advisory to growers

Some nurseries reported low germination of the PCH seed that

was sourced from the Brazil. A team from SPGS & UTGA set out to investigate and an index of possible causes was compiled and it included; poor watering regimes (watering frequency and quantity), sowing omissions, deep sowing depth, un-shaded beds, early sorting and the use of untrained nursery staff (notably in the new nurseries).To avoid such losses, it is recommended that all nursery operators should en-roll and attend the UTGA/SPGS-or-ganized nursery management courses that are available on the SPGS web-site. UTGA Members can contact the office to book their places.

SEED GERMINATION

UTGA growers congregate around the woodmiser

Logs with bad formation make conversion difficult

Conversion in the forest

The forest owner, Robert Bariho explains his findings to Members

ADvERTISING IN UTGA NEWS

UTGA News is now running adverts at cost-friendly rates. Reach hundreds of individu-

als, groups and companies in and of various fields and professions respectively who have invested in commercial forestry or are doing

work that is analogous to forestry

TESTIMONIAl

The GIS and Database development activities initiated in Uganda by UTGA are used for

sustainable forest managementin most developed countries and have also been initiated in Zimba-bwe, Tanzania, Kenya and South Sudan in the East African region.All forest properties in Norway have a forest man-agement plan and a land cover map showing the extend of each property and the resources available for utilisation. Using modern forest information systems, the plans and maps can easily be updated and the forest owner has a reliable tool for annual operational planning. The information collected for the forest properties is also available to the statis-tics bureau at the national level, which allows them to present reliable information about the state of forests in the country and give the policy makers a better basis for decision-making.In Zimbabwe Border Timbers Limited (BTL) established a GIS unit to map their 5 plantations covering a total of 48000 hectares. The mapping unit helped BTL to develop proper management plans and provide them with the basis to certify the company with the Forest Stewardship Council adding value to the forest products being sold on the global market.The South Sudan Forest Sector programme was based on cooperation between the Government of Norway and the Government of South Sudan, with implementation by the Norwegian Forestry Group (NFG) and the Ministry of Agriculture and Forest-ry (MAF/GoSS. A forest monitoring office, Land Resource Survey and Information Centre (LRSIC) was established in Juba, to carry out mapping of the resources and develop a database for all of the plantation forests in the newly formed country.Based on the vast experience of data collec-tion and storage, as well as forest management planning, NORSKOG/UTGA have embarked on acquiring information needed for decision making at the property level, but also on a national scale in respect of industrial development. The data on properties and resources will allow UTGA to de-termine the vicinity and volume of standing timber in the plantations that have been planted over the past decade and form the basis for development of Forest Management Plans in the near future.

On Tuesday, 19th February, 2013 a team from Rwanda vis-ited UTGA offices to get ideas on how to establish a simi-

lar organisation back home in Rwanda to be called- “Rwanda Wood Energy Growers (RWEGO)”.They wanted to get information on how they can form the as-sociation and how to run operations to serve the membership.The Team explained that they lacked knowledge of many aspects in Commercial Forestry in Rwanda and therefore were here to learn from Uganda through UTGA and other Forestry stakeholders in Uganda.The issues raised about which they needed guidance included,

Plantation establishmentWoodlot establishmentPromotion of a favorable environment for plantations in RwandaSustainable Energy Production through woodlots.

They used UTGA as a bench mark for the development of RWEGO in Rwanda.The team was taken to the Ferdsult Plantation in Lugazi where they were shown modern silvicultural practices like lining out, marking for thinning among others.Along the way they were also taken to a nursery owned by a UTGA Member to show them the importance of having a recommended source of good planting material.

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GIS Forestry & Database Development

UTGA HOSTS VISITORS FROM RWANDA

UTGA Programmes Officer Irene explains to the Rwandans

The team visits a nursery

GOOD TIMBER

Reminder to Pay 2013 Membership Fees

This is to kindly remind all UTGA Members to Pay their Annual Membership fees for the year

2013. The office would like to appreciate the support and response that it gets from those who made con-tributions in the running of the Association in 2012 The office also acknowledges all Members who are paid up Your cooperation has helped in the sustainability , development and growth of the Association

WORD FROM ThE UTGA OFFIcE

SEED UPDATE

Contact: Uganda Timber Growers As-sociation (UTGA)P.O.Box 75063 Kampala.Tel: 256-785-343564Email: info@utga.ugWebsite: www.utga.ug

This newsletter is a product of UTGA with support from SPGS and NORSKOG

UTGA News is a digital newsletter for the Uganda Timber Growers Association. It is published semimonthly (twice a month) to briefly summarize recent forestry-re-lated publications, projects, activities, and news.Do you have news, content, or ideas that you want to share in upcoming newslet-ters? Please send us your segments on articles and opinions on your organiza-tion, partnership, project, group, field stories, successes, challenges, fact sheets,

papers, books, guides, or other resources, upcoming or past events.

UTGA News is a great way to reach a wide audience of foresters, natural resource persons, practitioners, scientists and the publics across the Uganda, East Africa and across the globe. If you have friends (of forestry) or any-one you think will benefit if they receive UTGA News, please send their email addresses to dennisk@utga.ug.

TREE GROWERS NuRSERyHas high quality pine & eucalyptus seedlings at affordable prices, Certified by UTGA/SPGS

Contact: David Balumya on 0752-842934/0776842934/0702842934 Location: Kiboga

The tree that never had to fight, for sun and sky and air

and light,That stood out in the open plain and always got its share of rain,Never became a forest King, but lived and died a scrubby thing.

The man who never had to toil, to rise above the common soil, Who never had to win his share of sun and sky and light and air,Never became a manly man, but lived and died as he began.

Good timber does not grow with ease,The stronger wind, the tougher trees,The farther sky, the greater length,The more the storm, the more the strength;By sun and cold, by rains and snows,In tree or man Good Timber grows.

Where thickest stands the forest growth, we find the patriarchs of both,And they hold converse with the stars, whose broken branches show the scars, Of many winds and much strife,This is the common law of Life.

Other Guys Theatre Co.

UTGA Members are kindly informed that they can now

pay their subscription fees conve-niently by sending their outstand-

ing amounts to the office Line 0785-343564.

Please include the mobile money charge and in the space set aside for the reason, please fill in your particulars i.e. name/company

name. Receipts will then be prepared by the office and will also be issued at all UTGA meetings where staff

interface with Members.

The office is in the final stages of agreeing payment terms with the

Supplier and import documents are being worked on. Members/buyers will soon be informed of the unit cost price per kilo of seed.Members and prospective buyers are hereby informed to get in touch with the office for bookings. Write to caroln@utga.ug.

MEMBERS cAN NOW PAY ThEIR FEES US-ING MOBIlE MONEY

This tree would give good timber