The northern belt of Europe, from Brittany through Bavaria and onwards east and north is adorned with dark green spruce forest. Spruce is a fantastic commodity – growing happy on any soil, relatively fast, unbelievably straight, used for everything from furniture to violins. As such, it is a dear love of the European timber industry, which has built itself squarely on this one tree. But spruce has an Achilles heel – temperature. When the weather gets a little too hot and dry, this tree becomes very susceptible to bark beetles. And that is what has been happening in Europe year after year since the 1990s since climate change started to show tangible impacts in the region. The result of putting all the forestry eggs in one basket: millions of spruce trees standing dead, unmarketable, industry in chaos, people’s investments lost.
Scientists at European universities have known about this looming threat for decades, yet the message somehow never reached forest managers and landowners. Forest entomologists, pathologists, and climate scientists have not figured out how to be trusted messengers. What has gone wrong?
This is where extension systems in forestry come into play. Cooperative Extension is designed to ensure that knowledge is not only produced in laboratories but also shared and applied in your family forest and field. And while extension in the United States has been successful for over a century, its deployment in Europe has been patchy. In the U.S. extension has been a federally funded, coordinated pillar of rural prosperity run by universities. In most European countries, extension attempts were poorly funded, or were privatized, often becoming more similar to private consulting firms. These can help with immediate solutions, but rarely support a long-term vision and education, which is what forestry needs to avoid getting pummeled by global change (Van den Ban, 2000).
This edition of the GFSI blog tells the story of how Dr. Jiri Hulcr, a Global Food Systems Institute (GFSI) faculty member and a GFSI travel grantee is working to try to close the gap between research and application, with a promising initiative to introduce the proven UF/IFAS extension model to Europe.
The Role of GFSI Funding in this Project
Since its early starts, the Global Food Systems Institute (GFSI) has been promoting and supporting initiatives aimed at enhancing global food security, environmental sustainability, and agricultural innovation in places where they are most needed. One of the key ways GFSI supports these initiatives is through funding—empowering researchers to pursue groundbreaking projects that have the potential for far-reaching impact, especially in the global south. For Jiri, a forest entomologist at the UF/IFAS School of Forest, Fisheries, and Geomatic Sciences, GFSI funding has been instrumental in advancing his work in forestry research and extension.
Jiri’s research focuses on the interactions between insects and trees. His extensive work in many corners of the world has allowed him to develop a deep understanding of the diversity of forest ecosystems and the challenges they face. His expertise in forest health has positioned him at the forefront of addressing one of the most pressing, but often overlooked issues, in global forestry: the escalating climate intensification events combined with the introduction of pests and diseases threatening forests worldwide.
However, the global impact of Jiri’s work would not have been possible without the financial support from GFSI. As he explains, GFSI funding allowed him and his team to travel to Czechia (until recently the Czech Republic) to collaborate with local universities and forestry organizations. This collaboration was critical, especially after a funding setback when the USDA Forest Service, a key partner, had to withdraw from the project at the last minute due to budget cuts. Without GFSI’s support, Jiri would have been unable to continue the development of the project.
The Importance of Extension in Forestry
Healthy forests can be the number one nature-based solution to climate change and environmental stability. Dying forests, on the other hand, can become a major source of additional carbon in the atmosphere (Kurz et al., 2008). While research plays a crucial role in advancing scientific understanding of forests in the changing world, it is only through extension that this knowledge can be effectively translated into action. Extension, in the context of forestry and agriculture, refers to the process of transferring knowledge from research to the practitioners, farmers, and growers who can apply it in the field.
In the U.S., the Cooperative Extension System (CES) has long been a model for how knowledge transfer can be successfully achieved. The CES works by placing university employees within the communities they serve, enabling them to develop local trust and reputation, and thus communicate the latest research findings, innovations, and best practices to farmers and other practitioners. This system has been particularly effective in agriculture, where timely and accurate information can significantly improve productivity, sustainability, and resilience. This is becoming even more important in the face of climate-related disasters.
Extension systems serve a similar purpose in forestry. They help forestry professionals and landowners manage forests sustainably by sharing information about forest health, pest management, climate adaptation, and sustainable harvesting practices. The ability to translate new research into practical, actionable advice is essential to ensuring that forests remain healthy and productive for generations to come.
For Jiri, the success of the U.S. Cooperative Extension System has been a key inspiration in his efforts to bring solid extension practices to Europe. While the U.S. system has been supported and refined for a century, many European countries, including Czechia, struggle to connect researchers, landowners, and policymakers.
The Challenge: Europe’s Lack of a Robust Extension System in Forestry
As mentioned earlier, Europe faces a unique set of challenges when it comes to managing its forests. One of the most significant challenges is the gap between scientific research and its application in forestry. While Europe is home to many of the world’s leading research institutions in forestry and environmental sciences, these institutions often work in isolation from the practitioners who manage the forests.
The lack of a unified extension system means that research findings are not always communicated effectively to the people who need them most: the landowners, forestry managers, and policymakers. As a result, the forest industry in Europe faces several sustainability challenges, including increasing frequency of pest outbreaks, climate change adaptation issues, degradation of forest ecosystems, and a lack of diversification of the timber industry which then fails to catch up with evolving markets.
This communication gap is particularly concerning in the context of the growing global threats to forests. Formerly harmless forest insects, such as bark beetles, are becoming devastating pests due to the stress inflicted on trees by rising temperatures. The problem can be prevented by adapting forests to the realities of the new climate and the global homogenization of insects and pathogens. By “adapting,” forest scientists typically mean fairly intuitive changes, such as diversifying tree species and spacing them out to alleviate competition and disease transmission. Ideally, that work should have started decades ago, when predictions of rising temperatures first became widely available, but it did not, and most European forestry companies continued to plant spruce, even in places that were known to be too hot and dry. Thus, the largest historical outbreaks of bark beetles ensued (Washaya et al., 2024)(Washaya et al., 2024).
But all not is lost.
This is where the U.S. extension model offers a valuable lesson—by focusing not just on research, but also on how to effectively communicate that research to those on the ground, the U.S. system has helped to improve agricultural and forestry practices across the country.
Dr. Jiri Hulcr’s Effort to Bring a Modern Extension System to Europe
With his experience in the U.S. and his deep understanding of global forestry challenges, Jiri has taken on the ambitious task of introducing a modern extension structure to Czechia. His work, which began with a collaboration between the University of Florida and Czech universities, aims to lay the foundation for an effective extension system that can improve forest management practices across Europe.
Jiri recognizes that the U.S. extension model cannot be directly replicated in Europe, given the different political, economic, and cultural contexts. However, he believes that elements of the model—particularly the focus on innovation transfer and collaboration between research institutions, government agencies, and industry—can be adapted to suit Europe’s needs.
There are two key challenges for forestry extension in Europe. One is obvious – money. While funding for scientific research is relatively abundant in Europe, there has been less emphasis on supporting the translation of research into practical solutions for the forest industry. Jiri’s goal is to convince governments and universities to dedicate resources not only to researchers but also to communication and education specialists that can ensure the findings are communicated to those who manage the forests.
Interestingly, the second big problem is explaining what extension actually is. Jiri had to develop an entire communication campaign just to explain that extension is not outreach (Hulcr, 2022, https://climatebeetle.org/). Extension is a mutual, systematic, programmatic, goal-driven, and stakeholder-oriented effort in which information flows both ways. It is an entire career focus in which the development of trust comes first, before data. It is not just outreach, and it is not just science communication, both of which can have less well-defined outcomes and audiences.
A key milestone in this effort is the creation of a legal framework in Czechia that will support innovation transfer in forestry. Jiri and his local partners have included policies in a new Czech forestry law that directs the government to fund not just research but also the dissemination of research to practitioners. This framework, if successful, could serve as an inspiration for other European countries struggling with putting research and innovation into practice.
The Potential Global Impact of This Initiative
The impact of successfully introducing a modern extension system in Europe could be far-reaching. As Jiri notes, the lessons learned in Czechia could be expanded to other European countries, such as Germany and Sweden, whose forestry industry faces similar challenges in the changing climate. In the long term, this initiative could help improve forest health, enhance climate change adaptation, and boost sustainable forestry practices across Europe.
The implications of this work extend beyond Europe. As the world faces increasing environmental pressures, including climate change and invasive species, the need for proactive forest management is more urgent than ever. The success of an extension system in Europe could offer a model for other parts of the world, particularly in regions facing similar challenges, such as North America and Asia.
Furthermore, this project has the potential to create global partnerships that can accelerate the transfer of knowledge and innovation across borders. By working with organizations like the OECD and fostering collaboration between European and U.S. institutions, Jiri’s efforts could help shape the future of forestry on a global scale.
Conclusion
The introduction of a modern extension system in Europe, inspired by the successful U.S. model, is a critical step toward ensuring the long-term health and sustainability of the continent’s forests. Thanks to the support of GFSI funding and the dedication of experts like Jiri, Czechia is on the path to addressing the communication gap between research and practice. This initiative not only can improve forest management in that country but could also serve as a blueprint for other regions facing similar challenges.
As we continue to confront global environmental challenges, the need for effective knowledge transfer systems in forestry becomes ever more important. With the right investment in extension and innovation transfer, we can ensure that forests remain healthy and resilient for generations to come and that trees will be climate solutions, not climate victims.
References
Hulcr, J. (2022, April 19) Jiří Hulcr: Cooperative Extension. The American way of transferring innovations, and why we need it to protect the Czech landscape. Retrieved from https://ekolist.cz/cz/publicistika/nazory-a-komentare/jiri-hulcr-cooperative-extension-americky-zpusob-prenosu-inovaci-a-proc-ho-potrebujeme-na-ochranu-ceske-krajiny
Kurz, W.A., Dymond, C.C., Stinson, G., Rampley, G.J., Neilson, E.T., Carroll, A.L., Ebata, T. and Safranyik, L., 2008. Mountain pine beetle and forest carbon feedback to climate change. Nature, 452(7190), pp.987-990.
Van den Ban, A.W., 2000. Different ways of financing agricultural extension. ODI Agricultural Research and Extension Network. Network Paper No. 106b, pp. 8-19
Washaya, P., Modlinger, R., Tyšer, D., & Hlásny, T. (2024). Patterns and impacts of an unprecedented outbreak of bark beetles in Central Europe: A glimpse into the future? Forest Ecosystems, 11, 100243. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.FECS.2024.100243 Washaya, P., Modlinger, R., Tyšer, D., & Hlásny, T. (2024).
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