U of T’s forestry school faces the axe

by James Bradshaw

After 104 years of seeing the forest for the trees, dwindling enrolment has left the future of the faculty of forestry at the University of Toronto in doubt.

It was Canada’s first forestry faculty, and North America’s second, but is now also one of the smallest, with a dozen faculty teaching fewer than 80 graduate students. For that reason, the administration has deemed it “not financially viable,” said dean Sandy Smith.

Canada has 10 per cent of the world’s remaining forest cover, and a quarter of its undisturbed frontier forest, but enrolment in forestry programs has dropped across the country, as well as outside it. In a 2009 survey of 65,000 graduating high school students, just six chose forestry as their preferred discipline.

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