Gwyn Jones Francis
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Gwyn Jones Francis, CB (17 September 1930 – 27 November 2015) was a Welsh civil servant and forester.
Born on 17 September 1930 at Llanelli, Francis was educated at the University College of North Wales, graduating in 1952 with a degree in forest botany. After two years of National Service, he entered the Forestry Commission in 1954, serving as a district officer in Wales. From 1960 to 1964, he was principal of the commission's Gwydr Forestry Training School and then spent a year completing an MSc at the University of Toronto.[1]
Returning to the Forestry Commission, Francis held various posts in Wales before entering the headquarters in 1976. He was appointed a Forestry Commissioner in 1983 and in 1986 became Director-General and Deputy Chairman of the commission,[1] serving until 1990 when he retired and was succeeded by Robin Cutler.[2] In these senior positions, he oversaw development programmes which attracted over a billion pounds of investment into Scotland, primarily in the form of paper mills. As director-general, he introduced a tree-planting scheme in 1988 and negotiated with the government to keep the commission's enterprise and authority branches under the commission's control in spite of political proposals to break them up.[1] For his services, he was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB) in the 1990 New Year Honours.[3] He died on 27 November 2015 in Edinburgh.[1]
