It is a changing landscape. We must learn to keep a much keener eye on the changing opportunities and threats for forestry. Duncan Poore stressed this to me twenty years ago, and it remains key today. If we don't engage with the broader changes, we may keep on dreaming up forestry solutions to problems that are actually caused outside the forest sector - which are therefore bound to fail. I hope I have made it clear that, if my work has any authority, it is through close observation of many national and local 'leaders'.
Leadership is shared and arises from many, very real local contexts.
My early thoughts on using the Queen's Award fund are, therefore, to work with some Commonwealth training institutions to promote excellence among younger foresters within their local contexts - especially in understanding the big picture and in stakeholder interactions. I'll finish with a story of four tailors in one street, let us say in Perth. Times were difficult, and one tailor thought to put up a sign claiming he was 'the best in Perth'. Inspired by this, the next followed with a board identifying him as 'the best tailor in Australia'. The third responded with a big display claiming nothing less than that he was 'the best tailor in the world'.