The chairman’s annual report to the Trustees began in September last year, twelve months after our Founder’s first cheque arrived in the Trust’s bank account.  Since September 2007 first projects have progressed - or paused - in realisation of their potential. 

The Lions of Ethiopia project soon proved too good to be true.  The rather basic, traditional form of population management practiced by the Anbessa Gebi (Lion Cage), euthanasia of unwanted cubs, stirred a local animal welfare interest group to alert the international press.  This attracted the attention of Leipzig and Lowry Park Zoos and the Born Free Foundation.  Conservation Works, having already submitted an open report to the Mayor of Addis Ababa, stood back while a variety of teams arrived to investigate the facts and prepare their proposals.  Two proposals are currently before the authorities, a wildlife sanctuary and a new city zoo, neither representing the black-maned lions of Addis Ababa as the outstanding conservation opportunity we recognise.  News recently received suggests that the lions may represent, at least, a new intra-specific, philogenetic taxon of African lion.  The blood samples for DNA analysis had been exported by following a protocol negotiated by CW between the Mayor’s office and the Wildlife Conservation Authority.  We will remain in touch with our Ethiopian contacts, and others, by calling in to the Ethiopian capital, en route to and from DRC, and will continue to advocate an international workshop to consider the lions’ conservation potential.

The refuge for Chimpanzees of DR Congo in Lubumbashi, has already proved its conservation worth by driving the trade in chimpanzee infants from the streets of the town and surrounding area.  Although it is fully recognised that this barely scratches the surface of a huge conservation issue, it has taught JACK, the local NGO responsible, much about the way to spread its influence.  CW-backed principles include: only confiscated chimpanzees are accepted; every new arrival is viewed as an opportunity to confront a new aspect of the illegal trade; the wider implication for conservation that CW seeks is to bridge the chasm between political and practical conservation, recognised by us as a major obstruction to species recovery.  Frequent visits to the refuge by ministry personnel and other decision-makers, including the Governor of Katanga and President of DR Congo, are examples of connecting government legislation to implementation in the field.  Another opportunity is to engage the respective skills of two sectors, zoos and sanctuaries, in a combined campaign to stop the trade, it is no accident that JACK’s refuge is situated within an old Belgian Congo zoo.

A first meeting of an interest group concerned for the loss of endemic Copper Tolerant Flora of Katanga from mining took place in Lubumbashi, attended by university, zoo and mining representatives.  Chaired by CW, this first meeting established the objective, in principle, for a botanic collection of metallophytes in a miombo forest setting within the Lubumbashi zoological garden, originally also a botanic garden.  A potential site for the collection has been visited by students and staff of the Faculté des Sciences Agronomiques, Lubumbashi; visiting Professors of Belgian Universities, including the acknowledged world authority on Katanga metallophytes, Prof. Francois Malaisse; local conservationists; and Anvil Mining who undertook a free geochemical survey. The survey showed high levels of copper (in the region of 0.75 Cu) due largely to the heavy metal fallout from a nearby refinery, making it suitable for the attempted propagation of metallophytes.  A working group with Prof. Michel Ngongo, Dean of the Faculté, as chair, has been proposed, partnering with La Société Congolais des Jardins Zoologiques et Botaniques, and Conservation Works as project coordinator.  The next step will be to find a funding partner or partners.  The wider conservation implication is for cross-sector collaboration between world associations of zoological and botanical gardens to provide sanctuaries for imperilled species, fauna or flora.

A major achievement was to get most Trustees together for a meeting in London on 5^th June. There was an in-depth discussion around the Mission, leading to a final version, which can be found on our home page.

At this meeting, and subsequently, two very generous grants were offered to take Conservation Works into phase 2 of its development.  Phase 2 is when the Trust starts to engage conservation specialists, together with their own ideas about what can be done to save species.   Dr. Carl Jones joined us to present his case for species recovery and produced some ideas for consideration.  One opportunity concerned three Seabird Species of the Indian Ocean, the white-tailed tropicbird, the wedge-tailed shearwater, and the fairy tern, none of which have been bred in captivity and released to the wild.  Though not critically endangered species, they have become locally extinct from some islands, infested until recently by introduced rats, rabbits and/or goats.  The project has two aims, the reintroduction of seabirds to islands they once inhabited, and restoration of the island ecosystems, fertilised naturally by the seabirds’ guano – exactly the species-specific plus wider conservation qualities we look for in a project.  The Trustees have since agreed to make a grant to Carl to put his theory to the test.

Meanwhile a Phase 1 initiative to engage two sectors, European zoos and an international NGO, Fauna and Flora International, in a common conservation endeavour to save the Saiga Antelope of Kazakhstan (also of Uzbekistan and possibly Turkmenistan when on migration) led us to Professor EJ Milner-Gulland at Imperial College.  EJ has been working on saigas for the last 18 years, carrying out research on their ecology, behaviour and conservation and instituting conservation and public awareness initiatives both locally and internationally.  She explained that conservation of this extraordinary antelope had reached an impasse, unable to progress towards a sustainable harvest, the incentive to conserve its migrating herds, because no one knows where or when the migration musters or moves.  She said that nothing short of a major scientific project was required to track the herds by satellite and fixed wing aircraft. This requires a considerable sum of money, which, itself, demands the time and attention of a fund-researcher to locate.  Exactly the right candidate had emerged and with little time to waste, the trustees approved EJ as our first conservation specialist to oversee the sourcing of funds to unlock this opportunity.

Other developments include the launch of our website built and designed by Henry Chapman and Rory Pickering, both still at University.  We are indebted to them both and think they have done a great job.  I can also report that the evaluation data from the results of over 1,500 conservation recommendations is ready to to be built into an interactive database (see Workshop) and we are currently negotiating its construction.

Finally, we warmly welcome three new Trustees, Martin Bralsford, Martin Davies Jones and John Jeffrey, all with specific qualities and tasks (see Who We Are – Trustees).  In doing so we also thank Tim Hirst for holding the financial fort as we got ourselves organised.  We now have a good foundation, in our governance, our field experience, our attention to evaluation, and our original thinking, upon which to base our next phase for development.  Phase 3 is a strategy to attract more donors to a funding mechanism that ensures their support is utilised to maximum effect for the benefit of species conservation.  It starts now.