biosketch
Lloyd C. Irland
Born 1946, Chicago, Illinois
Irland was active in scouting growing up and attended forestry school at Michigan State. Received MS degree at University of Arizona and then went into the Army, serving in Vietnam. He did brief stints as research analyst at the Chicago Board of Trade, working on plywood and lumber futures. This was the beginning of a long interest in the lumber and panel industries.
In 1973, he completed a Ph D at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and then went to work for US Forest Service research at New Orleans.
He soon returned to teach at Yale for 3 years and then was hired to serve as Forest Insect Manager in the Maine Forest Service, managing the spruce budworm control program. He then served 2 years as Director, Bureau of Public Lands, and then as State Economist.
He then formed his own consulting firm, doing fiber supply, market research, and policy work for a range of clients. Over the years this work has involved much of the Northeast and Eastern Canada, with additional assignments for Washington DC groups and as far away as Alaska. He has served on a number of advisory groups for state government and professional groups.
These past 5 years, Irland has spent fall semesters teaching forest finance and professional ethics at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies while continuing to pursue consulting activities.
In summer 2006, Irland spent two months as Visiting Research Professor at the French Forestry School, ENGREF, in Nancy, France. This was an excellent opportunity to become familiar with forest practices and wood industry in Central Europe, a region becoming more important of the US as a source of softwood lumber imports.
In recent years, his professional work has also taken him on lecturing and study tours to Germany, Indonesia, China, and India. He has traveled twice to Ukraine for these purposes, the second time as a Fulbright Senior Scholar.
Irland has written five books and more than 325 professional and technical articles. He is a frequent speaker at wood industry and logging trade meetings and at professional forestry and scientific meetings.