U.S. Senator Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., Monday announced that West Virginia University (WVU) has joined an elite group of land-grant institutions that house Centers for Wood Utilization Research. Byrd secured $500,000 for the Division of Forestry in WVU ’s Davis College of Agriculture, Forestry, and Consumer Sciences for this important initiative.

“West Virginia’s forests have provided jobs and economic prosperity for the state for many years but additional resources and opportunities remain untapped. I am pleased to have obtained funding to ensure WVU ’s inclusion in this project which will work to identify and promote sustained economic growth for the state’s wood products industries,”Byrd said.

Byrd added the $500,000 for WVU ’s Division of Forestry to the Fiscal Year 2004 Agriculture Appropriations bill which was approved by the Senate as part of a larger federal funding package last month.

The Centers for Wood Utilization Research were established to generate the new knowledge and technologies needed to maintain a vigorous and competitive domestic forest products industry based on sustainable use of the nation’s forest resources. These centers address the major problems confronting the domestic forest products industry and have the breadth to span the sustainable utilization and harvesting of eastern hardwoods, southern pine, western softwood, and northeastern species, with additional focus on the development of associated manufacturing and machining technologies. WVU will join ten existing centers which participate in the initiative.

Joe McNeel, director of the Division of Forestry, will coordinate the program at WVU through the Division’s Wood Science and Technology Program in cooperation with the Appalachian Hardwood Center (AHC), a joint effort of the Division and the WVU Extension Service. McNeel notes that joining the initiative will significantly expand WVU ’s ability to conduct the kind of research that will have direct benefit for the Mountain State’s wood products industry.

“As a part of this initiative, we will be able to examine global competitiveness, help develop engineered wood products and wood-plastic hybrids, and create value-added uses for wood residues from logging and production processes,”McNeel said. The over-arching goal for the Division will be”to improve the economy, profitability, and potential of the West Virginia wood products industry.”

Toward that end, McNeel and colleagues in the Division’s Wood Science and Technology program have established an informal advisory group of representatives from industry and related state and federal agencies to help determine the direction of WVU ’s wood utilization research. The funding also provides the Division an opportunity to improve its wood utilization research infrastructure, purchase new research equipment, and update laboratory facilities.

The WVU Division is already held in high regard by employers, having been named one of the ten most recruited forestry programs in the nation in a study by the Pinchot Institute for Conservation. McNeel feels participation in the initiative will only strengthen the program’s links with industry, speeding up the industry’s ability to apply research findings in their operations.

McNeel is currently reviewing research proposals and possible infrastructure investments for the first phase of initiative funding. He will submit the initial slate of projects to the USDA Cooperative State Research, Extension, and Education Service in March for final approval.