by Ann & Mike Scott
Visit by the International Crane Foundation
We were pleased to catch up (briefly) with our good crane friend Dr Rich Beilfuss (left), the President and CEO of the International Crane Foundation (www.savingcranes.org) in Swakopmund on 27 October 2017. Rich was part of the founder group that put together the Namibia Crane Action Plan, on which the activities of the Namibia Crane Working Group are based, at a workshop at Etosha in May 2004 (see our first newsletter in June 2004 and also No. 47). We are grateful to the ICF for providing long-standing encouragement and support to our crane conservation activities in Namibia.
New range maps for the world’s 15 crane species
IUCN Species Survival Commission Crane Specialist Group (email mirande@savingcranes.org)
The IUCN SSC Crane Specialist Group
us pleased to announce that the range maps for the 15 species of crane produced on
behalf of the Crane Specialist Group have been completed. An announcement has been placed on the Crane Specialist Group’s webpage on the International Crane Foundation website (https://www.savingcranes.org/announcing-new-range- maps-for-all-15-crane-species/).
These maps will be an integral part of the updated global Crane Conservation Strategy (CCS) which the Group aims to publish in 2018. It is making significant progress on completing this landmark publication. In the meantime, these maps have great value and are available as low reso- lution images (see examples on right) on the ICF website (https://www.savingcranes.org/where-do-cranes-live/).
KAZA (Kavango-Zambezi) Bird Counts
7/2/17 Jason Gilbertson (jgilbertson@ppf.org.za)
I am the new KAZA (Kavango-Zambezi) Monitoring & Evaluation Technical Officer and we are busy developing a database to help promote wildlife conservation in the KAZA region. We are using different indicators and two of these indicators are the Wattled Crane and the Ground Hornbill, of my understanding you might be able to help us with. We are trying to collect information on sightings of these birds in the KAZA region (I am contacting you for the Namibian KAZA sightings) to create population counts per year.
If you have any data on the number of sightings please let me know or let me know who you think would, any information would be really appreciated. We don’t have anyone working in the field but if we found and useful information regarding these birds we would be happy to share with you and we would acknowledge you on our website and the maps we produce.