Countryside Management Association News

Mark Stone, chief executive of Parks Victoria and patron of IRF, has committed to providing a Parks Victoria employee to IRF for three years to build IRF capacity. This generous offer will help provide IRF with a secure foundation. The position has been offered to Elaine Thomas, a Parks Victoria employee who was elected to serve a second term as IRF secretary at the recent IRF Congress in Bolivia.
IRF’s International Executive Committee (IEC) has voted enthusiastically to accept this offer from Parks Victoria for support of Elaine for three years. Elaine will continue her secretary role while expanding her IRF work under the guidance of the president and the IEC.

There were 50 nominations for this annual award, with the judges selecting Alasdair Harris of UK as winner. Alasdair (age 24) established Blue Ventures, a marine conservation organization dedicated to promoting conservation efforts to safeguard the Madagascar marine biodiversity, as well as the livelihoods of its indigenous, semi-nomadic fishing communities, who are entirely dependent on marine resources for subsistence, income, and cultural identity. Since its start with one community in 2003, Blue Ventures has expanded to 23 neighboring communities and is now working with other non-governmental organizations to replicate this model for resource management along an ambitious 400 km of coastline.

Other finalists were Krissie Clark, Tanzania; Arthur Omondi Tuda, Kenya; Florin Stoican, Romania; Heng Sokrith, Cambodia and Satya Priya Gautam Bhalla, India.

The Young Conservationist Award was founded by IRF and IUCN Program on Protected Areas. The awards have been sponsored by Parks Victoria, Australia, which pays the expenses for the award recipient to travel to the ceremony. This year, there will be a special ceremony at the first Healthy Parks Healthy People Congress in Melbourne Australia, which is being hosted by Parks Victoria.

Those younger members of CMA and others under age 35 might like to consider applying for the 2010 Alfred Toepfer Scholarship (managed by EUROPARC).

Participation in the Alfred Toepfer Scholarship programme is open to all those under age 35 who are employed by any European protected area or a nature conversation institution as well as students and graduates of higher educational institutions. The objective is for awardees to travel to other European protected areas gathering experience which will be both of benefit for their future career and to the EUROPARC Federation and its members. Awards are of 3,000 Euros.

Applicants can apply for the following themes:

Biodiversity
Climate Change
Integrated Management of Natural Resources
(water,forest, etc.)
Rural Development (interaction between rural
and urban landscapes)
Renewable Energy
Sustainable Tourism
Food and Agriculture
Health and Protected Areas
Environmental Education and Communication
International / Transboundary Cooperation

For detailed information about applying for the scholarships please see the 2010 scholarship guidelines at http://www.europarc.org/uploaded/documents/280.pdf
Registration for 2010 will open on February 15th. when the online registration form will become available. Applications will remain open until 16th May 2010.

Previous winners from UK are Rachel Danneman in 2008 (Peak District NP) and Saira Sheldrake (New Forest NP) and Naomi Scuffil (Dartmoor NP) in 2009.
Rachel spent time touring the Greek National Parks looking at management of fire and water issues.
Saira hopes to develop a tool to predict disturbance distances of the recreational sport of Kite-surfing on wintering and wading birds in protected areas with coastlines
Naomi plans to study landscape-scale nature conservation projects in two German National Parks.

Roger Cole
CMA International Adviser

Centre in the Park at Norfolk Heritage Park, Sheffield

Aims of the event
To examine the importance and value of education in the outdoors, the impact of the Manifesto for Learning Outside the Classroom and to promote examples of best practice.

Target Audience
Schools, Local Authorities, Consultants, Providers of Outdoor Recreation, Site and Land Managers, Countryside Managers.

Please click on the link below for further information and booking on this event:

http://www.countrysiderecreation.org.uk/events/crn-events.asp

The Countryside Recreation Network

A 41-year-old National Parks and Wildlife Service ranger, Aaron Harber, was killed and a pilot seriously injured when their helicopter crashed during firefighting operations on December 9th 2009.

Police said the helicopter crashed in dense rainforest about 50 kilometers west of Coffs Harbour. Emergency personnel arrived at the scene to find the pilot suffering critical head, chest and back injuries. Harber was already dead. The pilot was taken by ambulance to Dorrigo Hospital.