Forest Growers Committee

Lachie McCaw (Chair)

Lachie has been active as a forest grower since 1999 managing a 15 ha family forest west of Manjimup in the south-west of Western Australia. The forest has commercial plantings of radiata pine and southern bluegum together with amenity plantings of various south-west eucalypts. Lachie has been Chair of the Growers Committee since January 2022.

Mark Wright

Mark has always been interested in trees and timber and had a desire to work with and in the natural environment. He has been involved in the commercial growing of timber trees since 1999, planning & establishing mixed eucalypt plantations with his family business, Super Forest Plantations, in Northern NSW. He completed a Forestry Degree at Southern Cross University in 2006.

Hanna Lillicrap

Hanna’s career in forestry has predominantly focused on large scale plantation establishment and management. Since moving to the NT and taking on an industry role that centres around growing forestry in the region, she has become very interested in small scale/farm forestry as there are great opportunities for it in the Northern Territory.

Nigel Calvert

Nigel Calvert is a second generation mixed farmer producing beef, lamb and forest products in high rainfall and high altitude Northern Tasmania in the foothills of Mt Barrow. Has largely transitioned from managed native forestry into both hardwood and softwood plantations. Nigel was chair of the AFG Tasmanian branch at the time of amalgamation with the IFA.

Philippa Noble

Philippa farms at Brimin on the Murray River with her husband Simon. She has an Agricultural Science degree, and post graduate training in aquaculture, climate change and ornithology and undertook the Gottstein Wood Science course. She worked with the Victorian government in agriculture and natural resource management for over 30 years mainly as an extension officer. She is currently President of the Victorian Farm Forest Growers and secretary of the Rutherglen Landcare Group and on the committee of a number of other environmental organisations.

Mike Rautenbach

Mike and Michele Rautenbach purchased their 390ha ex-bluegum property located in the McAlinden district in Southwest WA in August 2014.  In winter 2015 they commenced re-planting to radiata pine, with the area under pine now totaling 200ha. The balance of the land area comprises mainly jarrah/marri/she-oak native forest. Professional forestry consultants were engaged  in the early years of plantation establishment however Mike and Michele now perform most forest maintenance and monitoring themselves spending time between their farm, Pinecrest, and their home in Perth.

Kevin Harding

Kevin transitioned from a long research career in plantation wood quality research into consultancy work in this area and forest advocacy (Director and Chair of Australian Forest Growers 2013-2019; Deputy Chair Forestry Australia 2019-2022). Since 2012 he has lived on a 44.5 ha tropical rainforest block in Far North Queensland with about 70% forest cover. He  is gradually planting up about 10 ha of cleared land on the block with hoop pine, rainforest cabinet wood species and a trial of agar wood.

Paul Ojansuu

Bio to come

Rowan Reid

Bio to come

Growers Reserve Fund

In January 2019, the Institute of Foresters of Australia (IFA) and Australian Forest Growers (AFG) merged. As part of this merger the IFA received all AFG assets and assumed liability for all its obligations.  As part of the merger agreement, the IFA and AFG agreed to establish a reserve fund to support Australian forest growers  This was particularly important to active AFG Branches that nominally had funds (raised from field days, conferences and other Branch activities) held by AFG National Office and that the AFG Board used in 2013 to enable AFG to avoid insolvency and continue to trade.

The purpose of the reserve is to ensure the funds are held separately and allocated specifically:

  • for the benefit of Forestry Australia grower members and future grower members
  • to provide resources for grower members to conduct field days, mini-conferences, seminars and produce educational information or undertake projects for the benefit of private forest growers activities
  • to grow the number of Forestry Australia grower members and
  • to support and encourage Australians to grow more trees.

Application of funds from the IFA/AFG Forest Growers Project Cash Reserve Fund will prioritise activities that benefit the largest number of forest grower members possible.

Applications for activities supported from the Grower Reserve Fund will be considered according to the following principles:

  • clearly promoting the interests of private growers and advocating for improvements in legislation, policy, codes of practice and other instruments that affect tree growing and private forestry;
  • encouraging interaction and communication between members and the development of expanded networks;
  • enabling growth in grower membership of the IFA/AFG;
  • being accessible to a broad range of members, while recognising the need to cater for diversity in regional settings and grower interests throughout Australia;
  • providing longevity of benefit to members by making information available through stable and secure platforms such as websites, searchable databases and bibliographies;
  • Opportunities to maintain and grow the fund will be pursued to the extent that resources allow and where these are consistent with the principles of the Institute of Foresters of Australia and Australian Forest Growers.

Please note:  The Grower Reserve Fund will generally not be used to cover expenses that could reasonably be expected to be met from other sources – e.g. catering or food costs for meetings and events that can be recouped via an event cover charge.