The new President of the Society

Forest and Bird, Volume 15, Issue 3, 1 August 1984, Page 21

The new President of the Society

Dr Alan Edmonds was elected President of the Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society of New Zealand at our Council meeting held in Wellington on 9 June 1984. He becomes the Society’s 10th president since its foundation in 1923 and replaces retiring president Tony Ellis, Q.C., a Wellington barrister, who held the office for the last 8 years. Alan Edmonds, 43, is Reader in Biological Sciences at Waikato University Hamilton, and has research interests in the ecology of native plants and the physiology of agricultural plants. Dr Edmonds was previously on the staff of Lincoln College, Canterbury, and has worked at the Forestry Department, Oxford University, and at Ruakura Agricultural Research Centre. Since 1979 Dr Edmonds has been a member of the Society’s National Executive and has been national Deputy president since 1981. He has chaired the Joint Campaign on Native Forests, a coalition of New Zealand’s major conservation organisations with interest in native forest conservation, since its inception in 1980. Dr Edmonds is Chairman of Trustees for the Coromandel Coalition, a member of the Pureora State Forest Park Advisory Committee, and has served on scientific advisory committees for National Parks, land use advisory committees, a working party of the Environmental Council studying environmental ethics, and has acted as consultant to the QE II National Trust, local authorities and government departments on the ecology and management of native forests. Married with 3 teenage children, Dr Edmonds is presently taking study leave from Waikato University. He is in Wellington for 8 months with the Queen Elizabeth II National Trust, preparing an ecological inventory procedure for describing properties covenanted to the Trust. ye