The Principals

Annabel Kater (BSc.Agr, M.Forestry, MIFA): Annabel’s interest in sustainable forest management grew out of her work with Greening Australia, Landcare, and other natural resource management organisations in farm forestry, native forest management and rural revegetation. After completing a Masters of Forestry at ANU which focused on native forest silviculture and eucalypt ecology she has worked as a forestry consultant providing advice and training in native forest management to landholders.

She has had a longstanding involvement with farm forestry on her family’s cattle property in the lower Hunter Valley where regrowth forest are being managed to produce high-quality sawlogs. She has delivered several plantation-focused Master Tree Grower (MTG) courses in the Hunter and lower north coast and she is currently writing the course notes for a MTG course focused on Native Forest Management.

James Felton-Taylor (BEnv.Sci): James has worked with timber in construction projects in Bermagui, Sydney and Newcastle. He completed his Bachelor of Environmental Science in 1996 from the University of Newcastle. His passion for sailing led to the long term restoration of Shalimar a 1950’s 25 foot wooden sloop which is now at home on the waters of Lake Macquarie.

James has worked for Green Corps and Greening Australia proving an excellent manager of small teams in the field. He has expanded his knowledge of forestry through direct involvement with planning, design and implementation of farm forestry systems and now works as a forestry consultant.

Between the two of them have experienced the highs and lows of plantation establishment (particularly through the last drought), and know the effort required to ensure seedlings survive and grow into trees with commercial potential. Having worked for a season thinning out thick, regrowth that had re-established itself on the family’s grazing property, the merits of managing robust natural systems for timber and conservation became an obvious alternative to trying to re-create them.

Annabel through her passion for native trees and studies of forest systems and James through a combined passion for the environment and working with timber, share a vision for developing a sustainable forestry industry on private land.