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Conservation Education

• Moving Ahead On International Sections
• Update: Cuban Conservation And Collaboration

Moving Ahead On International Sections

In the November SCB newsletter the Board of Governors' plan for establishing seven international sections was outlined. Here we report on the current state of action.

Africa. We tentatively plan to hold a workshop with AAAS and the International Livestock Research Institute in Nairobi this June to discuss strengthening networking for conservation biology in Africa and Africa-U.S. linkages (in part through establishment of a SCB Africa section). A proposal for support to the U.S. National Science Foundation has been recommended for funding. M.A. Sanjayan and I will probably represent the SCB Board of Governors at this meeting; Robert Malpas (robmalpas@cdc.ie) in Nairobi is currently laying a foundation for forming a section. M.A. Sanjayan also plans to organize a discussion at the 2001 meeting in Hawaii.

Asia. To date no potential leaders have emerged. The diversity of Asia may make it a difficult region for forming a cohesive section but we will certainly try with M.A. Sanjayan (msanjayan@tnc.org) taking the lead until someone from the region steps forward.

Australian region. David Given from New Zealand (Givend@lincoln.ac.nzor givend@attglobal.net) has organized a major contact group of a dozen or so people in the region. They will sponsor an open discussion at the 2001 SCB meeting.

Europe. We are hoping to celebrate the creation of a European section at the 2002 SCB meeting in Canterbury, United Kingdom. Ongoing efforts to organize this section are being led by Georgina Mace (georgina.mace@ioz.ac.uk), co-chair of SCB's Internationalization Committee.

Marine. There will be a workshop at the 2001 SCB meeting to discuss SCB's role in marine conservation, including the formation of a marine section. Dee Boersma (boersma@u.washington.edu) is organizing the workshop.

North America. Given SCB's North American bias, forming a North American section is not a priority. However, the opportunity is certainly open for a group to pursue organization of this section.

South and Central America and Caribbean. We are hoping that the launch of NeoCons, our web-based bulletin (see page 19 of the November 2000 newsletter), will spark strong interest in this region. NeoCons editor Jon Paul Rodriguez (jon@eno.princeton.edu) and Reed Noss will be attending the First Binational (Argentina-Chile) Ecology Meeting from 23-37 April 2001 in Bariloche, Argentina (http://www.raexx.com.ar), where they plan to discuss formation of a section.

Malcolm Hunter, Co-chair, Internationalization Committee

Update: Cuban Conservation And Collaboration

In the November 2000 newsletter, we presented SCB members with an overview of conservation issues in Cuba and the opportunities that exist for conservation and collaboration. Since that issue went to print, there have been several events with repercussions for cooperation between conservation biologists in the United States and Cuba.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has established a Clearinghouse (http://shr.aaas.org/rtt/) to support scientific collaboration between the United States and Cuba. The main activities of this AAAS program are providing the scientific and academic community with updated information about U.S. and Cuba travel policies, monitoring the outcome of visa and license requests for travel to and from Cuba for scientific purposes, mobilizing the scientific community to call for changes to U.S. travel policy and its implementation, assisting individual scientists whose right to travel to or from Cuba has been denied, and monitoring Cuban travel policy to determine whether it is correlated with U.S. policies.

In October 2000, the U.S. Senate approved a bill that will allow food and medicine to be sold to Cuba. This seemed to bode well for the process of restoring relations between the U.S. and Cuba. However, given the number of restrictions ultimately added to the bill, very little food or medicine might actually reach Cuba. Furthermore, the bill sets current travel restrictions into law, thereby eliminating the possibility of a presidential initiative to ease restrictions in the future. A further setback resulted from telephone communication restrictions imposed by Cuba in response to U.S. congressional legislation allowing the use of Cuban funds frozen in the U.S. and restrictions imposed on U.S. telephone companies to pay Cuban taxes. The U.S. wants to use Cuban funds to compensate the families of Cuban-American pilots that were downed by Cuban planes in a controversial international incident. Finally, the outcome of the presidential election surely will have further repercussions on the development of U.S. policies towards Cuba.

Eduardo Santana

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