Dr. Avnish Jolly,14 June:SAARC Forestry Centre has been established at Taba in Thimphu on Wednesday. It will serve as a centre of excellence for forestry within the SAARC region and act as a nodal point for research, information and policy development.
Governing body comprising members from South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries will manage the centre. It is the first SAARC Regional Centre to be established in Bhutan. The centre will prepare a database on forestry research and training institutes of the member states, and would develop and host a SAARC forestry website. For the current finical year, the centre will get a budget of about US $3.6 Lac.
The regional centre will help in providing information to improve the fragile mountain ecology through involvement of local communities and adopting sustainable forest management practices. The centre’s main roles would be to provide a platform for regional networking and sharing of experiences in forestry among the SAARC member countries. Sangay Wangchuk, , Nature Conservation Specialist in the Forestry Department of the Bhutanese Government has been appointed as the centre’s first director