AHEAD Update – September 2005

Dear AHEAD Colleagues:

*I should again note that if you wish to be removed from this e-mail list please just let me know. My hope is to keep parties interested in AHEAD up-to-date on developments post-Durban World Parks Congress over time, but I certainly understand if anyone wants to opt out of receiving such messages. Updates are also posted (and archived) on the AHEAD website at www.wcs-ahead.org.

*Congratulations to the AHEAD Kenya Working Group (who at the Durban WPC AHEAD launch had looked at project priorities for places like the Ewaso Nyiro Basin) for their successful Medium-Sized UNEP GEF proposal, "Regional (Kenya, Burkina Faso) Dryland Livestock / Wildlife / Environment Interface Project (DLWEIP)." The overall size of the project totals US $3,356,000- with the GEF grant contributing $1,000,000!

*We have been told that the AHEAD GLTFCA initiative will be receiving a grant of $102,500 from USAID, which WCS will administer in support of the 'frameworking' module (led by D. Cumming), the 'scenarios planning' module (led by M. Murphree), and ongoing management of the AHEAD GLTFCA initiative. These funds would be extremely good news and we await final confirmation by October, and we hope to discuss this in more detail at the next AHEAD GLTFCA Working Group meeting (see below).

*Just in time for the 2nd Anniversary of the AHEAD launch (!), the AHEAD Proceedings are on their way to those of you who requested them. If you do not receive what you requested by the end of October, please let me know!

Osofsky, S. A., Cleaveland, S., Karesh, W. B., Kock, M. D., Nyhus, P. J., Starr, L., and A. Yang, (eds.). 2005. Conservation and Development Interventions at the Wildlife/Livestock Interface: Implications for Wildlife, Livestock and Human Health. IUCN, Gland, Switzerland and Cambridge, UK. xxxiii and 220 pp.

We hope the volume meets your expectations, and congratulations and sincere thanks go out to all of the chapter authors, Durban launch participants, and co-editors who worked so hard to make this book a reality. We hope that conservation and development colleagues from within and, as importantly, outside of the health science professions will find this volume thought-provoking, insightful, practical, and applicable to their daily work.

If you would like to order additional copies (or if you did not request any before), please email IUCN Publications at books@iucn.org AND tricia.thong@iucn.org, and they can provide all cost (including shipping) information. Note that neither WCS nor the AHEAD initiative receive funding from the sale of the books, but IUCN Publications disseminates them at a reasonable cost as part of their overarching conservation / information-sharing mission. Eventually, books will be advertised for sale on the IUCN Publications website at http://www.iucn.org/bookstore/index.html, but as of this writing IUCN had not yet put the link in place so please use the emails I've listed above for orders. We are largely out of the complimentary copies we were able to provide to World Parks Congress AHEAD launch participants/authors, but if there are compelling cases for complimentary copies you would like us to consider, please do let me know. Of course please do share any extra copies you might have requested with your coauthors who may not have been with us in Durban or who may not be as directly involved in the AHEAD initiative- thanks.

We hope to have PDF files of the entire book as well as of individual chapters/sections available on the AHEAD website (www.wcs-ahead.org) for downloading by the end of the year. These can be used for e-prints and to make reprints as needed. Please let your coauthors know about this as well, as we want to make it easy for authors / interested parties to download / share these cutting-edge materials.

*AHEAD has recently been invited by the Government of Namibia's Ministry of Environment and Tourism (MET) to help organize an informational workshop on the Animal Health for the Environment And Development paradigm, and how it might be applicable in the context of Namibia's protected and surrounding areas. This represents a very exciting opportunity for AHEAD, and David Cumming and Mike Kock are currently looking at possible November / December dates for what is shaping-up to be an exciting and productive forum with participants from various agencies within Namibia. If this first working meeting is successful, we anticipate seeking participation from a number of you over time in what we hope will be a growing, collaborative effort.

*We hope to schedule the next (sixth) meeting of the AHEAD GLTFCA Working Group before the end of 2005. A separate, more detailed, note will be sent to the AHEAD Great Limpopo TFCA Working Group email list once the meeting dates are finalized. Scheduling has proven to be challenging, but we have a packed agenda in mind, including but not limited to:

-reporting out on the May 2005 'Frameworking' meeting held in Skukuza (hosted by SANParks and WCS). Those of you who were at the 5th AHEAD GLTFCA WG meeting in Pretoria in February will recall that the Working Group opted to charge a subset of WG members with refining the AHEAD GLTFCA initiative's overarching conceptual framework, to begin fleshing-out the theoretical and practical parameters needed for successfully understanding and addressing the health issues and their socioecological context in a complex, dynamic system like the GLTFCA. The May Skukuza meeting was the first of what we anticipate will be an ongoing process, involving those of you who are particularly interested in the underpinnings of this type of analytic approach.

-USAID funds permitting, we hope to hold the first (introductory) session of the 'scenarios planning' module, to be led by Mike Murphree, as part of this 6th AHEAD GLTFCA WG meeting itself.

If you have items for the next AHEAD Update, please just let me know – thanks.

All the best,

Steve