page_title: Forests Commission Victoria
section_title: Nurseries and extension services
hierarchical_section_title: Forests Commission Victoria / 1960s - Consolidation / Nurseries and extension services
caption_attribution_description: English: Photo
context_page_description: The Forests Commission Victoria was the main government authority responsible for management and protection of State forests in Victoria, Australia between 1918 and 1983.
  The Commission was responsible for ″forest policy, prevention and suppression of bushfires, issuing leases and licences, planting and thinning of forests, the development of plantations, reforestation, nurseries, forestry education, the development of commercial timber harvesting and marketing of produce, building and maintaining forest roads, provision of recreation facilities, protection of water, soils and wildlife, forest research and making recommendations on the acquisition or alienation of land for forest purposes″.
  The Forests Commission had a long and proud history of innovation and of managing Victoria's State forests but in November 1983 lost its discrete identity when it was merged into the newly formed Victorian Department of Conservation, Forests and Lands along with the Crown Lands and Survey Department, National Park Service, Soil Conservation Authority and Fisheries and Wildlife Service.
context_section_description: The first State nursery was opened by William Ferguson at Macedon in 1872 while a nursery at Creswick opened shortly after by John La Gerche in 1887. By the late 1960s regional nurseries were located at Tallangatta (Koetong), Benalla, Trentham and Rennick near Mt Gambier to produce softwood seedlings for the Commission's Plantation Extension (PX) program, Farm Forestry Agreement holders and other private land owners. A large nursery at Morwell River attached to a low-security prison produced over one million eucalypt seedlings each year while another prison at nearby Yarram at Won Wron grew pines. The prison inmates did much of the planting in the Strzeleckis.
  Other extension nurseries were situated at Creswick, Macedon, Mildura and Wail near Horsham growing nearly one million native plants each year to support the trees on farms initiative (a precursor to Landcare which started later in 1986).
  Private plantations companies like Australian Paper Manufacturers (APM) operated their own nurseries in Gippsland.
caption: The Creswick Nursery was established by John La Gerche in 1887 to grow plants to rehabilitate degraded mining areas. The Commission operated a number of nurseries across Victoria. Circa: 1920
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