TIPWG facilitates collaboration on pesticide use across the forestry industry.

TIPWG seeks to achieve industry compliance with local legislation, international conventions and standards.

Local legislation

International conventions

Standards bodies

All the legislation documents can be found in the member’s section – click here, for access

Roger Poole – NCT Forestry

Roger is a Saasveld trained forester with 14 years’ experience in the industry. He has been involved in all aspects of forestry, managing plantations for various timber companies and private growers. Roger has always had an interest in pesticides and has completed the AVCASA Agricultural Management course at Technikon Pretoria.

In 2007, Roger made a move to the agrochemical industry marketing and selling pesticides across a number of markets, including forestry, working for water, conservation and rangeland.

After 11 years in the agrochemical industry, Roger returned to forestry where he now works at NCT as a Member Services Co-ordinator. In this role he assists private timber growers with supplying good quality fibre to be processed into wood chips for export to international paper manufacturers.

Professor Keith Little – Nelson Mandela University (NMU): Senior Researcher and Lecturer.

Keith, based at the Nelson Mandela University George Campus, is involved with Silvicultural Research and Lecturing within the Forestry Programme (as part of the School of Natural Resource Management).

The main focus of Keith’s research centers around the broad silviculture areas of site preparation, regeneration and tending, with greater focus on vegetation and coppice management, eucalypt, pine and wattle regeneration, integrated pest management, abiotic risk mitigation and reducing chemical-use within forestry.

Keith is also interested in the development of interlinking support systems to enable and ensure seamless efficiencies between silviculture and other forest management disciplines (growth and yield, tree improvement, nursery practices, harvesting and spatial technologies), as well as interacting with the forest industry at all levels in aspects that are associated with research uptake and the subsequent delivery of any outcomes.

Dr Gerhard Verdoorn – Griffon Poison Information Centre: Director.

Gerhard is the Director of the Griffon Poison Information Centre, managing a 24 hour wildlife and human poisoning information and emergency centre. He is also part of the agrochemical emergency response team and a technical advisor from many different pesticide, agrochemical and conservation bodies.

Gerhard’s academic qualifications include an M.Sc, PhD and Post-Doctoral fellowship in organic chemistry. This was followed with lecturing roles, as both a Senior Lecturer in Organic Chemistry and a Professor of Conservation Biology at the University of Johannesburg. His research career has focused on synthetic organic chemistry, phytochemistry, environmental toxicology, occupational health, industrial chemistry as well as vulture biology, toxicology and genetics.

As well as being the TIPWG Technical Expert, Gerhard is also a technical advisor for the Forest Stewardship Council, an advisor to the Predation Management Forum and the Chairman of the Safety, Health and Environment Committee of the Association of Veterinary and Crop Associations of South Africa (AVCASA) amongst other things.