Happy Returns

Last night I arrived in Libreville, Gabon after 4 days of travel from Angola. To get here I spent 2 nights in Luanda, the capital of Angola, followed by 2 nights in Johannesburg, S. Africa. It always takes awhile to get anywhere in Africa. Luanda was very loud because their elections are coming up, so people drive endlessly through the streets waving flags and honking horns; there was also a DJ across the street from the hotel blasting music at obnoxious levels 24 hours a day. Joburg was cold (it’s winter south of the equator now) but I stayed at a nice game lodge, saw a few interesting birds and had time to catch up on work on my computer.

I’ve come to Gabon to participate in strategy and planning meetings hosted by WCS for coastal ecosystems here. Hopefully these meetings will produce a unified strategy for research, training and fundraising so that researchers and managers can all work more effectively and cooperatively together. That’s not to say that folks here aren’t working effectively now, just that now that the national parks are 6 years old, it’s time to assess how things are going and see what can be done to improve. For example, up to now fundraising for each national park has been done independently and much research done independently as well… I’m hopeful that collaborations can be strengthened to fundraise together and build upon the fieldwork collaboration for multiple species and their habitat.

The meetings will be held in Mayumba, a beautiful national park on the southern border of Gabon. This is the first place I surveyed for manatees in 2006 and I’m looking forward to getting back there.