Regional IAWA Groups

Jointly with numerous other organizations, IAWA Members are active all over the world in organizing scientific meetings in which the study of wood structure and function plays a major part. Whenever the IAWA is a leading partner in these meetings, the regional IAWA Committees play an active part in their organization. Over the last decade the composition of regional committees has undergone minor or major changes. Below is the current composition, as we are aware of them. Some of the forthcoming meetings these groups are organizing will be updated. Please see future Meetings.

Carmen Marcati, Fidel Roig, Veronica Angyalossy, Teresa Terrazas, Marcelo Pace.

Tomoyuki Fujii, Hisashi Abe, Lloyd Donaldson, Biao Pan, Keiko Kuroda, Kim Yoon Soo

Pieter Baas, Steven Jansen, Veronica De Micco, Volker Haag, Emmanuel Ebanyenle.

WRAITH – Wood Research Against Illegal Timber Harvest – serves as a focal point and task force within IAWA on topics related to illegal logging and forensic wood science, and liaises with the broader scientific community and governments around the world to ensure that wood science, and specifically wood anatomy, makes the proper contribution to the global forensic efforts. This initiative was accepted by the Council in September 2015 and is headed by Alex Wiedenhoeft.


Membership is restricted to a targeted set of IAWA member wood anatomist volunteers representing the major regions of the world, with special emphasis on researchers or scientists with active interest in forensic aspects of wood anatomy specifically, and wood science more broadly, and who are or could be involved in their nation’s law enforcement efforts. At this point, the following experts are included in WRAITH: Peter Gasson (UK), Sri Nugroho Marsoem (Indonesia), Emmanuel Ebanyenle (Ghana), Jugo Ilic (Australia), Alex Wiedenhoeft (USA), Elisabeth Wheeler (USA), Yafang Yin (China), Vera Coradin (Brazil), Sandra Florsheim (Brazil), Gerald Koch (Germany), and Hisashi Abe (Japan).
The specific objectives of WRAITH are:

• Contribute botanical and wood anatomical knowledge to forensic wood research around the world to ensure the rigor and accuracy of such work for forensic purposes;
• Develop suggested standards for periodic competency verification for wood identification labs, including proficiency testing schema for wood identification of solid wood and a variety of commonly traded wood-based products and provide a list of labs that demonstrate this competency (e.g. to CITES Secretariat);
• Draft an IAWA statement on the role of the Association in promulgating research and science of use in combating illegal trade in wood;
• Re-invigorate the STEALTH initiative – Science, Technology, and Education Assuring Legal Timber Harvest – that began at the 2010 IAWA-IAWS-IUFRO meeting and actively recruit participants into the group to form a robust international cooperative network. Explore the possibility to link STEALTH to other networking vehicles such as LinkedIn, ResearchGate, and Facebook. In other words, STEALTH can be a platform how to manage the IAWA-WRAITH interactions with other disciplines;
• Commit to periodic electronic synopses of ongoing research and recent accomplishments within the field of wood anatomy sensu lato and wood science more broadly, so that IAWA members are apprised of developments in these areas and can serve as liaisons to their governments and institutions on these topics. Publish such synopses on the IAWA website, IAWA Journal and IAWA newsletters, and conduct outreach to FLA (Forest Legality Alliance), Chatham House, UNODC (UN Office on Drugs and Crime), CITES, and other groups actively interested in preventing illegal logging.