Wednesday 6 October 2010

But hope springs eternal....

Bad news from Mat re: the Pyrenees, but what can be done about it? Recent news articles (Sierra Nevadas: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/05/science/05frog.html?_r=1&hpw Mallorca: http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100609/full/465680a.html ) show that some of us are trying some things out. Since mitigating any infectious diseases of wildlife is no small task, we need to share experiences, methods, project ideas and results at a global scale. Doug Woodhams and Benedikt Schmidt have organized a Bd mitigation workshop to run Oct 14/15 in Zuerich, Switzerland. Invitees include Cherie Briggs, Vance Vredenburg, Roland Knapp, Jaime Bosch, Mat Fisher, Reid Harris, Lisa Belden, Brian Gratwicke, Ross Alford, Erin Muths, Ursina Tobler, Leyla Davis, Corina Geiger, Sara Bell, Vicky Flechas, Louis Rollins-Smith and yours truly. Those of you not invited, don't worry, this is merely the first such meeting (and as such numbers had to be kept small) and the plan is to make a book of abstracts, notes and minutes available to all and sundry. This first meeting is global in nature, but herewith a challenge: why not organize your own, regional or even local, workshop on Bd mitigation (heck, on amphibian disease mitigation) to get the process moving for your amphibian assemblages threatened with disease? And remember to communicate the outcome of any meeting widely. Like on this blog, for instance.

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