Institute of Biodiversity Conservation

OSLO, April 23 (Reuters) – A tree that covers a large area of eastern Ethiopia but has only recently been categorised by botanists raises hope for finding new species elsewhere, experts said.

The problem of invasive alien species continues to grow, essentially due to global trade, transport and travel, including tourism, at an enormous cost to human and animal health and the socio-economic and ecological well-being of the world.

President Girma Woldegiorgis, a strong supporter and enthusiast of sustainable environmental management, congratulated Dr. Demel with the trophy on 20 March 2009. The HW-WGCFNR’s Award for Outstanding Contribution to Forest Research in Ethiopia recognizes Dr. Demel’s 27 years of dedicated service and hard work in forest research, education and development in Ethiopia, and more widely in Africa and the global community.

Time series of count data from a long-term monitoring programme in the Bale Mountains of southern Ethiopia, spanning over 17 years, evidenced marked variation in wolf abundance in association to disease epizootics affecting high-density populations in the early 1990s. Population numbers returned to previous levels after disruption, evidencing resilience to catastrophes, but at the lower extreme of densities the population rate of increase was inversely density-dependent; delays in the formation of new breeding units appeared to limit the capacity for immediate recovery

The network is set to enhance climate change adaptation capacity of developing countries by mobilising appropriate knowledge and technologies to help build the climate change resilience of vulnerable human systems.

A regional consultative forum on the development of the Global Climate Change Adaptation Network for Africa held recently in Nairobi , Kenya unanimously agreed that the network was necessary to bring together different kinds of expertise and capacities to address climate change.

Montreal, 1 April 2009 -More than 500 participants are set to negotiate the international regime on access and benefit-sharing (ABS) at the seventh meeting of the Ad Hoc Open-ended Working Group on Access and Benefit-sharing (WGABS 7), to be held in Paris from 2 to 8 April 2009. This meeting is the first of three mandated by ninth meeting of the Conference of the Parties, held in Bonn in May 2008, to finalize the negotiation of the international regime.