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In Vietnam, the expansion of plantation forests, the logging ban in natural forest, and the partial timber import ban were predicted to drastically change the industry’s procurement of raw material...

In 2012, the Vietnamese Government enacted Decision 24, which aimed to promote forest conservation and local development, incorporating a community support program in the national park buff...

Vietnam’s forestry policies have expanded the area of planted forests in order to meet the supply of raw materials for the timber processing industry. However, the diversity and volume of demand in the industry have also increased, and a shortage of raw materials can be assumed. For clarifying the correspondence of stakeholders, we explore changes in the resource supply behavior of forestry companies and procurement strategies of companies that manufacture lumber for glued laminated timber, medium density fiberboard (MDF) and wood pellets. Next, we discuss issues and future developments surrounding the supply and demand for timber from planted forests. According to a survey of Quang Tri Province, both industrial and on-farm tree planting play an important role in Vietnam’s wood industry. The origin of the supply has been categorized according to its purpose (products). On the other hand, with the declining supply of imported timber and natural forest timber, inquiries from sawmills and glued laminated timber factories for timber from planted forests have increased, and wood pellet manufacturers are facing competition for raw material procurement with MDF manufacturers, and the supply of timber from planted forests is becoming scarce. The key to the solution lies in improving the low productivity of current on-farm tree planting. To this end, forming farmer groups upon the acquisition of forest certification will help achieve economies of scale and bargaining power.

SUMMARY: Craniometry has revealed that continuous skull expansion occurs after dental maturity in macaques and other nonhuman primates. Endocranial volume has been shown to increase with age from mid-adulthood to older age in macaques. Thus, neurocranial thickness may decrease with age, especially from mid-adulthood to older age. Here, we investigated age-related changes in the cranial thickness of Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata). Ten cranial thickness measurements (ten neurocranial landmarks) were made using computed tomographic scans of 140 crania from adult macaques (67 males and 73 females). The cranial thickness at many sites was shown to increase in the neurocranium from young adulthood (7-9 years) to early-mid adulthood (14-19 years) in males and latemid adulthood (19-24 years) in females, while it was decreased in the oldest age group (>24 years). The cranial thickness at various sites showed a significant decrease from mid-adulthood to very old age in both sexes, although females had more sites with decreasing thickness than did males. The difference between sexes in terms of age-related changes in cranial thickness at sites on the mid-sagittal plane may be associated with the differences in the size of the projecting face and canines between males and females. The greater number of sites with decreasing thickness in females than in males may be associated with postmenopausal estrogen depletion in female macaques.