Leading the establishment of Australia’s first forestry organisation: some lessons for today’s leaders in forest management

Forestry education that goes beyond the standard and unoriginal

“…Transdisciplinary thinking integrates multiple worldviews to generate new insights and, importantly, communicates these to others without ignoring the complexity or stakeholder engagement. Summerfield and Keenan (2017) argue that the success of George Goyder (1826-1898) in developing forestry in South Australia was due to his ability to consider systems as a whole-'across the boundaries of social, physical, economic and environmental categories'-and 'effectively engaging stakeholders and citizens in understanding the relevant issues and in involving them in identifying possible solutions'. The curriculum for a forester interested in such transdisciplinary skills is substantially different to older, traditional syllabuses with its lists of course topics such as botany, ecology, silviculture, mensuration, utilisation, economics, management and policy (even though these subjects remain vitally important in forestry).…”