April 8, 2006 – The 11th Caribbean Urban and Community Forestry Conference will be held on St. Croix, June 19-22, at the Carambola Beach Resort. The four-day conference with the theme "Island Forests: The Urban and Natural Interface," is expected to attract experts in urban forestry from the U.S. mainland, Puerto Rico and throughout the Caribbean. The cost for registration is $200, students with identification, $125, and Exhibitors, $125.
Conference sessions will include formal scientific presentations, along with two field trips. The first field trip tour will focus on Remarkable Big Trees of St. Croix, which includes a stop under the largest Baobab (Adansonia digitata) tree in the Virgin Islands. Tour "A" will be led by Robert W. Nicholls. Tour "B" will focus on the Estate Adventure Nature Trail and a visit to St. Croix Leap, a project that utilizes local woods of fallen trees to make furniture, clocks and other products and will be led by naturalist Olasee Davis.
The Conference is sponsored by the University of the Virgin Islands Cooperative Extension Service (UVI-CES) in partnership with UVI Agricultural Experiment Station, V.I. Department of Agriculture, the V.I. Department of Tourism and USDA Forest Service/International Institute of Tropical Forestry.
For additional information on the conference, call 692-4069, 693-1071 or 692-4060 or visit the website at http//rps.uvi.edu/CES/Urban%20Forestry/urbanforestry.html.