島根大学演習林における樹木講座を中心とした生涯学習活動の現状と課題

University forest has played various roles not only in the education and research activities of university, but in financial support for university budget. Nowadays, no university forest can provide a sufficient financial support due to deteriorated timber price. In addition, nature conservationoriented society prefers a natural forest to a commercial forest. Hence, offering opportunities of education and research to the university members and to the public becomes more important task of university forest.
The extension course in dendrology open to the public has been held at the Sambe, Hikimi and Matsue Forest of Shimane University since 1996. Some trials of similar course for young pupils were conducted in 2000 and 2002. Through a process of the extension courses and the trials for pupils, some critical problems have arisen. Firstly, Shimane University Forest is located in remote area so that participants need to spend extra money and time to reach the forest. Secondly, only a little budget is allocated to the advertisement so that the officer-in-charge and the instructors need to interest themselves in distributing ad-papers. Thirdly, the support system of Shimane University takes no account of the activities in the university forest so that we have to negotiate and overcome the difficulties in those events at the university forest.
If the authority of Shimane University wishes to promote a lifelong learning further, we have to check and improve the problems one by one.