wawhitti – Camcore

Camcore assists with US Capital Christmas Tree

In early July 2022 Camcore was able to assist the United States Forest Service (associate member) in their search for the 2022 US Capitol Christmas Tree. This project allowed Camcore’s Andy Whittier to be recertified in tree climbing by the USFS so that we can continue to use this technique in collection of germplasm. In addition to being recertified the USFS and Camcore used this opportunity to climb eight 20-26 meter tall red spruce trees that had been chosen as potential US Capital Christmas Trees. The climbing of these trees was done to better inspect the quality of the trees while looking for any indication of endangered Carolina Northern Flying Squirrels in these eight red spruce. Thanks go to the USFS for coordinating this large effort and including Camcore. We are now eagerly awaiting to see which tree is chosen and followings it’s journey to Washington DC later this year.

Andy Whittier inspecting a candidate red spruce tree for the US Capital Christmas Tree.

2020-2021 Annual Report

Following a break in 2020 we are back with a new Camcore Annual Report covering 2020 and 2021. Find this report electronically below or on the publications section of Camcore website. Physical copies of our Annual Report are being mailed to members in June 0f 2002. Enjoy!

2022 Camcore Annual Meeting Announcement

In November of 2022 Camcore will hold our annual meeting in beautiful South Africa.

For more information please visit the following links:

Initial Announcement:
https://camcore.cnr.ncsu.edu/?page_id=2895&preview=true

Camcore Annual Meeting Information — Main Meeting
https://wetu.com/Itinerary/Landing/02250ecd-4105-409e-9029-24752858ed08

Camcore Annual Meeting Information — Potential Post Conference Tour
https://wetu.com/Itinerary/Landing/D31CC1D4-F134-471C-A85C-7864224DE11F

December 2020 Virtual Annual Meeting

As with everything else in this strange year, the 2020 Annual Meeting will not be what we have enjoyed in past years. Our meetings in Brazil, Sweden, Colombia, Portugal, etc., have been opportunities to disconnect from our normal duties, connect with colleagues from all around the world, learn new things, enjoy field tours and see forestry from new perspectives, and focus on Camcore breeding and research. Since we cannot all be present in one place this year, we cannot replicate all of those things, but we do hope to have a semi-focused period where we can review the status of our research and breeding projects, have some member presentations, and plan for 2021 and beyond.

Specifically, we are planning to have six Camcore Annual Meeting sessions over a two-week period, using Zoom. With members all over the world, in multiple time zones, we plan to hold the meetings at the same time as we have been holding the Webinars, as this allows for everyone to participate at a (more-or-less) reasonable time in their day. Since many members have regular staff and administrative meetings planned for Mondays and/or Fridays, we plan to have the Camcore meetings on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and restrict the meetings to 2½ hours. We will have a maximum of six meeting days, and this will give us slightly more hours in technical meetings than we typically have had in “live” Camcore meetings over the past several years.

We would like for everyone to mark off the following dates on their calendars:

Tuesday, Dec 1
Wednesday, Dec 2
Thursday, Dec 3
Tuesday, Dec 8
Wednesday, Dec 9
Thursday, Dec 10

For now, we will plan for all meetings to run from 7:30 AM to 10:00 AM, Eastern Standard Time (see time chart below). We will also plan to record all of the presentations, so if anyone has an unavoidable conflict and cannot attend a live meeting, you will still have an opportunity to hear the presentations, and provide feedback, etc.

Camcore 2019 Annual Report

The Camcore 2019 Annual Reports are ready!

We look forward to hearing everyone’s feedback and discussing the information within the report.

Carolina hemlock orchard established

New Carolina hemlock Orchard Established

Carolina hemlock seedlings waiting to planted

In early March of 2020 Camcore established a new Carolina hemlock orchard located just outside of Linville Gorge, NC. This 500 seedling orchard marks our third conservation planting of Carolina hemlock and the fifth domestic seed orchard established in 2020. After 17 years of working with domestic seed collections for imperiled species located across the eastern US, it is extremely rewarding to see a portion of this germplasm going back into conservation plantings. Many thanks are extended to the North Carolina Forest Service for both allowing us to establish this orchard on their property and for clearing the site prior to the planting. We also greatly appreciate the labor from the NC Bridge Crew in helping to plant the seedlings as well as several volunteers with the NC Hemlock Restoration Initiative. Without the assistance from these three groups this three day planting would have easily taken closer to three weeks.

At this point we are actively pulling more domestic seed from additional provenances and species with hopes to germinate it shortly. With these future seedlings our goal is to maintain momentum in establishing additional conservation seeds orchards with our cooperators in the US.