Upcoming activities:
2026
Past Workshops Organized:
2026
Tree Conservation Action Planning Workshop Vientiane (Laos) March 17-19 2026
Coming soon!
2025
Fagaceae Propagation and Conservation Training Workshops (Laos and Vietnam September 2025)
Last week, over 50 participants representing local communities, regional forestry offices and national university departments gathered in Laos at he CIREN center of the French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development (IRD) for a 3-day workshop on training propagation and conservation skills for threatened tree species. A mirror workshop was held in Vietnam in the week after involving around 60 people. Using classroom-, nursery- and field-based sessions, we introduced participants to collection, propagation and reforestation techniques, sharing our experiences and ideas on how to address challenges facing tree diversity conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity by local communities.
With participants now returning home to their communities and offices, as trainers we hope to have opened a shared rethinking of our opportunities and capacity for tree conservation at local and regional scales, and the small steps that can be taken to collect, propagate, replant and restore. With our partners at The Morton Arboretum, we continue to engage with participants, building a community sharing experiences and working to overcome challenges going forward. During the workshop at the IRD CIREN-center, over 1600 seeds of threatened Fagaceae were collected and are now germinating in the newly establised Nakai Native Plant Conservation Nursery. An amazing result, for which all our participants should be applauded!
We are especially grateful to fellow trainers from the Life Science Research Centre, Lao Ministry of Education and Sports and TRCRC (Tropical Rainforest Conservation & Research Centre) for making these workshops a success. Seeing trainers and participants at work in the nursery and at field sites, learning and making progress together, proves that community based workshops effect real and meaningful change when focusing on local engagement, capacity building, and empowerment, and are an essential component to enable inclusive and effective tree conservation at multiple scales.
2024
Coming soon!
2023/2
Tools for Tree Conservation Workshops in Chiang Mai and Hanoi. In October 2023, ACTG took part in teaching two tree conservation workshops at the Queen Sirikit Botanical Garden in Chiang Mai (Thailand) and the Vietnam National University of Forestry in Hanoi. The workshops were organized by BGCI & the Morton Arboretum, with funding from National Geographic. With participants from many countries in the region, we had a successful 2 weeks with conservation milestones on mapping of new individuals for ongoing assessments, fruitful project discussions and new collaborations!
2023/1
Late 2022, Dr Joeri Strijk was invited to attend the International Conservation Symposium 2023 organized by the Ecological Society of Taiwan and the National Forestry Department. The meeting, entitled ‘The Ecological Value and Plant Diversity of Southeastern Taiwan”, was organized in March 2023 in Taipei and featured Taiwanese and International experts from the International Oak Society, Global Conservation Consortium for Oak, and Botanic Gardens Conservation International. The meeting, stretching out over 11 days, involved joint vegetation surveys of highly diverse forest sites and discussions on species persistence, the critical threats facing plant diversity, and the obstacles to conservation efforts in southeastern Taiwan. The visit was closed with a full-day symposium and press conference in Taipei. You can read the whole article and trip report on the website of the International Oak Society (IOS) here. Species pages for all taxa found on Taiwan can be viewed on the Asian Fagaceae web portal here.
2021
In October and November 2021, Dr Joeri Strijk (ACTG) took part in teaching Online Identification Workshops organized by the Global Conservation Consortium for Dipterocarpaceae (GCCD) and Oaks (GCCO). These workshops consist of a series of free online seminars which can be joined separately, treating the major groups and differences between species in the various regions. Please click on the banner below to find more information on the consortia for Dipterocarps and Oaks.
2018
In September 2018, ACTG members joined Botanic Gardens Conservation International and Fauna and Flora International in organizing a Fagaceae Identification and Red Listing workshop at Pha Tad Ke Botanical Garden in Laos. Over the course of a week, lectures covered topics such as how to identify the major Fagaceae genera using slides and specimens, the latest advances in genomics and taxonomy of Fagaceae and active training on conservation assessments using the IUCN Red Listing criteria.