The World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC), a collaboration between the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and WCMC 2000, a UK-based charity, has a mandate from the UNEP Governing Council to provide a range of biodiversity-related services to UNEP, the biodiversity-related conventions and their constituent party-states and other bodies in the non-governmental and private...
The DIVERSITAS Programme's Second Open Science Conference, DIVERSITAS OSC2, Biodiversity and society: understanding connections, adapting to change to be held in Cape Town, South Africa, on 13th to 16th October 2009, has published a call for papers. The conference aims to provide overviews of a broad range of topics in biodiversity research and to support initiation of biodiversity research...
The Development Gateway has alerted us to a useful guide to developing biodiversity conservation projects, the second edition of USAID's Biodiversity Conservation: a Guide for USAID Staff and Partners. While providing guidance specific to USAID managers and recipients, the publication appeals to a broader audience with sections that explain conservation approaches and cross-sectoral linkages....
Trees in a Kalahari landscape
The ELDIS Manuals and Toolkits site has alerted us to an online guide and software for the analysis of biodiversity. Tree diversity analysis: a manual and software for common statistical methods for ecological and biodiversity studies provides a practical foundation for training in statistical methods for ecological and biodiversity studies. Produced by the World...
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) actively promotes the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity for food and agriculture, providing intergovernmental fora where biodiversity-related policy is discussed and relevant agreements negotiated and adopted by member countries. The FAO's web pages about agricultural biodiversity describe the organization's work...
Birdlife Botswana photo of the month: rare Denham's bustard by Pete Hancock
The June 2008 issue of Birdlife Botswana's newsletter, Birds and People, has arrived in HOORC's Library. The issue includes a ground-breaking satellite tracking study of Wattled Crane movements, Birdlife Botswana's work with avi-tourism, tagging of Booted eagles, a study of Marbou stork nesting patterns, Botswana...
The Harry Oppenheimer Okavango Research Centre will host the international symposium, Wetlands in a Flood Pulsing Environment : effects on Biodiversity, Ecosystem Function and Human Society in Maun, Botswana, 1-5 February 2010. Sponsored by UNDP-GEF through the BIOKAVANGO Project and the University of Botswana, the symposium will aim to provide an exchange of international scholars on the...
"Not all that is very useful commands high value (water, for example) and not everything that has a high value is very useful (such as a diamond)." Preface, The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity: an Interim Report
Environmental Valuation & Cost-Benefit News has alerted us to a new resource. At the European Environment Ministers Meeting's "Potsdam Initiative--Biological Biodiversity...
BIOTA transects in Africa
Professor Norbert Juergens of the BIOTA Africa (BIOdiversity Monitoring Transect Analysis in Africa ) project is visiting HOORC this week to discuss possible collaboration in observation of biodiversity change. The project, with bases in Morocco, West Africa, Congo, East Africa and Southern Africa (Namibia and South Africa), aims to provide scientific support for...
Biodiversity and the Law, a collection of papers presented at the 2003 conference Biodiversity, Biotechnology and the Legal Protection of Traditional Knowledge and published by Earthscan in 2007, looks at how to promote global economic development and at the same time preserve local cultural and natural diversity. The book's contributors consider the effect of three major international...
Freshwater Reviews, a new publication of the Freshwater Biological Association, is a peer reviewed international journal dedicated to enhancing the understanding of inland waters. The content of review papers is primarily biological but papers covering limnology, policy and socio-economic aspects of fresh waters are accepted. Freshwater is interpreted widely, embracing all inland waters...
Dr Liesl van As, fish parasite specialist from the University of the Free State, has alerted us to Large allozyme variation within populations and isozyme differences between Clarias gariepinus and C. ngamensis from the Okavango Delta, Botswana by University of Johannesburg scientists Herman van der Bank and Nico Smit, published in the African Journal of Aquatic Science in 2007. The authors...
Digitization project team Olebogeng Suwe and Anastacia Monageng
Portion of Peter Smith annotated map
HOORC's Library, supported by the BIOKAVANGO Project and working with the University of Botswana's Library Services Archives team, is digitizing selected historical materials from the library's special collections. The first project is electronic capture of 60 1:50,000 scale maps of the...
Trithemis brydeniFrom November to December 2007 dragonfly expert Jens Kipping of BioCart Environmental Assessments from Germany participated in the Botswana Taxonomic Survey field work in Moremi Game Reserve and Chobe National Park. The project, initiated and coordinated by the Department of Wildlife and National Parks (DWNP) and co-funded by the Government of Botswana and the European Union,...
Major natural history museum libraries, botanical libraries, and research institutions have joined forced in the Biodiversity Heritage Library. The plan is to digitize their holdings of published literature, making it available through a global 'biodiversity commons.'"For the first time in history, the core of our natural history and herbaria library collections will be available to a truly global audience. Web-based access to these collections will provide a substantial benefit to people living and working in the developing world -- whether scientists or policymakers."Making the content open access is an important element of the project. In a presentation on the project, this is described as "all content can be reused, repurposed, reformatted, sliced, diced, scraped, harvested,...
African skimmer from ARKiv site
Intute has alerted us to several film and image related web sites that focus on wildlife. Wild Film History is a multi-media guide to the history and heritage of wildlife film-making. Wildscreen is a UK-based educational charity promoting the public appreciation of biodiversity and the conservation of nature through wildlife imagery. ARKiv aims to compile...
Biodiversity is much in the news this week as the Encylopedia of Life launches on the web [ark] and the Doomsday Vault [ark] opens its global seed bank [search] in Norway. Biodiversity databases [search] are fine, we must know species to understand and save them; as are efforts to conserve crop seeds [search] for an emergency that given continued inaction on climate and ecosystem loss seems increasingly probable.
But what of policies and actions necessary to protect that diversity? What of equal efforts to avoid the catastrophe of a homogenized Earth collapsing for lack of key species? There are far too few efforts to finance the building of knowledge bases of required policies and action plans sufficient to protect biodiversity, as that gets into politics, social change and...
Biodiversity is much in the news this week as the Encylopedia of Life launches on the web [ark] and Norway's "Doomsday Vault" [ark] opens its global seed bank [search].
Biodiversity databases [search] are fine, we must know species to understand and save them; as are efforts to conserve crop seeds [search] for an emergency that given continued inaction on climate and ecosystem loss seems increasingly...
AllAfrica.com reports the gazetting of Namibia's Environmental Management Bill late last year. The legislation provides for thorough environmental assessment studies and consultations with communities and regional and local authorities before development projects are undertaken. It further provides for the creation of a development advisory council, the appointment of an environmental...
BIOKAVANGO Project and the Department of Environmental Affairs (Okavango Delta Management Plan) will host the Environment and Development Dialogue to discuss environmental/biodiversity conservation and development issues surrounding the Okavango Delta wetland prior to the commemoration of the World Wetlands Day and to mark the completion of the Okavango Delta Managament Plan.
The meeting, free...
The document known to wildlife conservation specialists in southern Africa as the "blue book", Conservation and wildlife management in Africa : the proceedings of a workshop organized by the U.S. Peace Corps at Kasungu National Park, Malawi, October 1984 edited by the late R.H.V. Bell and E. McShane-Caluzi and produced through Office of Training & Program Support, Forestry & Natural Resources...
Photo courtesy of Wesley Anderson With the holiday period fast approaching. the summer rains are coming more regularly, and activities at HOORC are slowing. School for International Training students, in and out of HOORC's library on their independent study projects for the past three weeks, have completed their papers are heading back home for the holidays. Among the projects carried out at or...
Inception workshops for research to support the BIOKAVANGO project were held last week in Maun.
5th December 2007: Consultancy for the preparation of the Okavango Delta aquaculture guidelines. Water Farming Botswana is the consultant.
7th December 2007: Usufruct rights framework for joint management systems for fish and veldt products in the Upper Panhandle. S Thapelo Attorneys is the...
The vlei lily, Pancratium tenuifolium, collected by the Heaths in Moremi
Roger and Alison Heath are passing through Maun, having completed collection and identification of plants for the Selinda Herbarium project in the Linyanti area north of the Okavango Delta. They are finalizing materials about the project for a book that will include local names and uses of the plants, to be published by...
The international politics of bird conservation : biodiversity, regionalism and global governance by Robert Boardman surveys the bird conservation and biodiversity field and reviews international bird protection development prior to 1970. Four chapters discuss transboundary and inter-jurisdictional developments throughout the world --of special interest to the Okavango community is Chapter 6:...
Helen Dallas and Belda Mosepele checking invertebrate samples in the Okavango Delta
HOORC's library has visitors from the University of Cape Town's Freshwater Research Unit this week --- Dr Helen Dallas and Dr Jenny Day -- who have been discussing aspects of aquatic biomonitoring in the Okavango Delta. In HOORC's library you can find A preliminary survey and analysis of the spatial distribution...
Trichodina magna parasite of Cichlid fishes
Professor Jo G. Van As and Dr Liesl L.van As of the Dept. of Zoology and Entomology, University of the Free State, South Africa, visited HOORC's Library today with copies of published work from the last ten years of their research on fish parasites in the Okavango system. The Van As team is looking at the interactions among parasites and their hosts...
Photo: courtesy Conservation International / Aquarap participant
The Okavango Freshwater Biodiversity Expert meeting will take place at HOORC in Maun from 24 to 27 October. The meeting will focus on data availability for species with potential value in monitoring the Delta’s water quality over a long-term horizon. Participants will be reviewing the available species data in a few key taxonomic...
The 2010 Biodiversity Indicators Partnership (2010BIP) has been successful in its application for funding from the Global Environment Facility (GEF). The partnership will coordinate the delivery and communication of a suite of indicators measuring progress towards the "2010 target", agreed by the Convention on Biological Diversity and the World Summit on Sustainable Development, to significantly...