From Chairman
A "seedling bank" that connects forest biodiversity to the future.
In December 2025 , our "Seedling Research Institute" was officially established as a new non-profit organisation. We will strengthen our organisational structure through this incorporation to expand our efforts to create native forests, which we have been conducting based in Hokkaido, nationwide as the "Seedling Bank Project."
The core of our initiative is creating a "seedling bank" where we cultivate and stock seedlings that have sprouted from seeds, and then return them to local forest creation.
Ensuring a stable supply of diverse seedlings has long been a challenge for forest regeneration. The Seedling Bank Project aims to become a groundbreaking "seedling infrastructure" that will resolve this bottleneck.
We sincerely look forward to welcoming those who will support us and those who will work together with us.
Toshikuni Okamura
Chairman, NPO Seedling Bank Institute
Profile
Born in Fukuchiyama City, Kyoto Prefecture in 1951. He was a member of the exploration club at Hokkaido University and graduated from the Faculty of Agriculture. His doctoral dissertation was titled "A Sabo (erosion control) study on the formation process of forests in active volcanic areas."
In 1979, he began working at the Hokkaido Prefectural Underground Resources Survey Institute (now the Geological Survey of Japan), where he was engaged in research on land conservation and environmental protection.
In 1991, he became an associate professor at Hokkaido Institute of Technology. He resumed his research on creating natural-looking green spaces and began collaborative research on green spaces with the Environmental Research Laboratory of the Hokkaido Development Bureau's Civil Engineering Research Institute (ecological mixed seeding and planting methods).
In 1997, he became a professor at Hokkaido Institute of Technology (now Hokkaido University of Science).
Since 2010, he has been the chairman of the NPO Near-Natural Forest Creation Association, which studies the concept of "near-natural forest creation," developed in Switzerland, that enables a balance between the environment and the economy, and works to transform simple forests into diverse forests and increase the value of economically degraded forests.
Since 2016, we have been cooperating in the development of the Ioru Forest in Biratori Town from the perspective of nature restoration and near-natural environments.
He has been an emeritus professor at Hokkaido University of Science since 2017.
In December 2025, I assumed the position of Chairman of the Board of Directors of the NPO Seedling Research Institute.