SAEON Node update

SAEON NDLOVU NODE

Exciting things are happening on the education outreach front. Education Outreach Officer Joe Sibiya has developed an Environmental Science Strategy for the Node as well as an education outreach programme for 2006.

An important focus of the strategy is to provide educator support and development with the intention of enabling educators to assist and participate in improving learner education. This will be done by way of Teacher Tearoom Forum meetings and the Environmental Science Workshop Series. The Tearoom Forum meetings aim to provide a forum for teachers with an interest in the environment to discuss issues of common interest. Participation in the first two Teachers Tearoom Forum meetings has been promising, and is expected to grow in 2006.

The Workshop Series is designed to improve the teachers’ understanding of environmental science and environmental issues. At each workshop they will be exposed to presentations from experts in various environmental fields and then set exercises to debate and solve problems. Some of these workshops will be held in Kruger National Park and the opportunity will be used to promote an understanding of wildlife management as well.

An additional component of the strategy is to develop learner science projects and to have schools participating in research programmes with the data forming part of the SAEON data holdings.

A proposal has been submitted to the South African Agency for Science and Technology Advancement (SAASTA) for National Science Week 2006 activities. The aim is to increase the number of learners who are exposed to the presentations and displays from 2100 in 2005 to 3500 in 2006. Learners from 50 of the local schools will attend during weekdays. Evening presentations will be held for members of the public and there will be day trips for selected learners to Kruger National Park as well as to the local mines. Part of the publicity will be a Fun Run in Lulekani Township.

Understanding the future

Kruger National Park and SAEON are organising the Fourth Kruger National Park Science Networking Meeting that will be held at Skukuza in the Kruger Park from 13 to 17 March. The theme is Understanding the future.

Topics include:

• Transfrontier Parks: a future of conservation?
  • The importance of long-term data for future understanding
  • Long-term slow changes
  • Dynamic fluctuations
  • Scale is important
  • Long-term ecological research and monitoring – what we need from it
• How herbivores shape the future
• Understanding the effects of land use and management
• Our rivers – our future
  • The future of data automation and data management
  • merging legacy data with future data
  • what are the data we need for the future?
• Engaging broader society in future conservation initiatives
  • Importance of socio-ecological understanding

So far the meeting has attracted some 60 to 70 presentations from both local and international participants. For further information, call Dr Dave Balfour on 015 – 781 5177.

NDLOVU to wait until mid-year to move into new offices

The building of the new administration offices and laboratory at the new access gate to the Kruger National Park and the Greater Limpopo Transfrontier Park, which commenced in May 2005, is showing good progress and completion of the construction phase is anticipated by end February. Thereafter the telecommunications will be installed.

The building is nestled within four other office blocks of SA National Parks that are under construction. SAEON staff will probably not move into their new offices before mid-year as it will be impossible to work in the middle of a construction site.

SAEON Node for the Coastal-Inshore Zone

Node manager to be appointed soon

Interviews were held with four short-listed candidates for the post of Manager: SAEON Node for the Coastal-Inshore Zone.

The node manager will be responsible for developing a set of observing facilities, consisting of at least one core site, several affiliated sites, and a significant number of sample locations, jointly spanning the range of coastal-inshore ecosystems of South Africa.

The interview panel consisted of representatives of the South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity (SAIAB), the South African Network for Coastal and Oceanographic Research (SANCOR), Marine Coastal Management (MCM) and SAEON. An announcement is expected early in February.