We are delighted to share with you the exciting news that Nora Kreher has been nominated for the prestigious Audi Terra Nova Award for 2005, in the category Environmental Conservation and Preservation. The other nominee was the Queen of Pondoland, who received her nomination in the category Environmentally Sustainable Social/Community Upliftment.

In her acceptance speech, Nora said, “I am so happy to receive this honour on behalf of The Bateleurs, our Directors, our pilots and our sponsors.  For, make no mistake, they made my dream happen.”

Nora joins an elite corps of nominees of the Audi Terra Nova Awards whose objective is to encourage the many unsung dedicated heroes and heroines for the work they do to preserve and protect the environment in all aspects – Air, Land, Water and All Living Creatures, including Man himself, thus reflecting the four rings of Audi.

Mike van der Zee, the Terra Nova Project Manager and founder of the awards, said, “Ecological integrity is a declared corporate aim of Audi worldwide, and the Terra Nova Awards were created as a reflection of this vision in South Africa.”

A nomination banquet was held at The Saxon, Johannesburg, on 2nd December 2005, sponsored by Audi, where Nora accepted the Audi Terra Nova Nomination Award from Mike van der Zee and Dr Ian Player.  The photograph is reproduced here courtesy of Danie van Jaarsveld of Motorpics.

For further information on the awards visit http://www.audi.co.za/ and then click Experience.
Please click below for the full text of Nora's speech.

We reported in our November Newsletter that Sven Kreher, Col. Bill de Pinho and Paul Dutton had held a workshop with LightHawk at the 8th World Wilderness Congress in Anchorage and really strengthened our ties with our role model.  As promised, we now have a couple of pictures for you and I have hi-jacked a short summary written by Vance Martin in the latest International Journal of Wilderness (www.wild.org). Vance Martin, President of WILD and advisor to The Bateleurs, was the organiser of the Congress and we are so proud of him and congratulate him on his really amazing success.  Vance wrote:
  
“The 8th World Wilderness Congress (WWC) met for almost two weeks in 2005, from late September to early October in Anchorage, Alaska, including several pre-Congress training sessions and seven days of plenary and concurrent sessions. The atmosphere was tangibly spirited and synergistic, and replete with enthusiastic, collaborative, and positive action. The Congress achieved its conservation objectives and generated additional results: new protected areas (private sector, native, and national); new wilderness legislation; increased governmental and organisational co-operation for new initiatives and networks; scores of professionals specifically trained in wilderness management, information and communications; new funding for targeted projects; and strong integration of conservation writers and photographers with scientists, managers, educators and policymakers. It tackled contentious issues such as proposed oil and gas development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and global warming. The following is a summary of the 8th WWC’s major practical accomplishments, with more details available at www.8wwc.org or through info@wild.org.

New Wilderness and Protected Areas:   Cemex, one of the world’s largest producers of cement, announced the designation of the El Carmen Wilderness Area, including critical biodiversity habitat owned by the corporation in northern Mexico. In co-operation with their partners, Sierra Madre, Conservation International, Birdlife, The WILD Foundation, and others, Cemex is creating a wilderness management plan for the Maderas del Carmen “Sky Island” and its stunning escarpment as part of a significant new protected area initiative called the El Carmen-Big Bend Conservation Corridor Initiative. This project will involve up to 10 million acres (4 million ha) including private ranches, corporate land, and government land on both sides of the Mexico-U.S. border. Cemex has purchased more than 175,000 acres (70,280 ha) of new conservation land, creating key corridors, and has entered into agreements with adjoining private landowners for an additional 60,000 acres (24,095 ha) of new land under conservation management, including wilderness. The Bonobo Peace Forest Initiative in the Democratic Republic of Congo—a joint project of Vie Sauvage and the Bonobo Conservation Initiative (Washington, D.C.), includes conservation agreements with local communities and concessionaires covering more than 5 million acres (20,000 square kilometers) of habitat in one of the largest blocks of contiguous rain forest left on Earth.”
  
At the time Vance wrote this summary George Bush had not yet lost his grip on the bid to drill for oil in the Arctic Refuge.  But he sure has now, and I have no doubt that the thousand and more people who attended the 8th World Wilderness Congress must be jubilating at the fact that every single Democrat plus some 22 courageous Republican congressmen promised to vote against the budget if it sacrificed America’s greatest wildlife refuge.

Bittu Saghal, editor of India’s brilliant Conservation magazine Sanctuary, and long time friend, shared this resolution taken at Congress and I hope it speaks to you as it does to me.  Sven was a signatory to Resolution Nine passed by the 8th WWC:

“WILDERNESS  AND  WATER  –  A  BASIC  HUMAN  RIGHT.  We have four years time before the 9th WWC to ensure that the United Nations Human Rights Commission recognises and accepts that the existence and protection of wildernesses is a basic human right because without these Homo Sapiens has no assurance of his most fundamental right – clean water, air and fertile soil.”  

 “This is a strategy,” Bittu writes, “to ensure that those who do not understand or appreciate the need to keep parts of the planet wild are prevented from turning our mission into a dead end by asking:  Do you like people, or polar bears, tigers, elephants …?”

So some great things came out of Congress and we are so thrilled that Sven and Bill and Paul were part of it and were able to present the environmental work that The Bateleurs are doing in Africa.

Our photographs show Vance Martin chatting to one of the Innuit delegates at the 8th WWC.

Several beautiful photographs of flying in Alaska have been added to our photo gallery.

The Bateleurs received a flight request from Jonathan Britton of SA National Parks, who needed our help to assess the extent of the damage caused by the fire in October in the Tsitsikamma National Park, in the Eastern Cape. 

The area includes mountains, indigenous forests and plantations, and the flight objectives were to map the range of the fire, assess the damage, and initiate appropriate management plans for the area.

The mission began at the Bloukrans Forest Station, took approximately three hours to accomplish, and evoked this response from Jonathan. 

“. . . expressing my gratitude and appreciation for the flight that the Bateleurs kindly organised for SANParks . . .  We had a wonderful flight and got some awesome photos of the area that will be valuable in our management of the area that was burnt to ensure that we implement appropriate management strategies. We also now have photos that we can use as a basis for monitoring of the rehabilitation of the area . We must also compliment the pilot who was very professional and in whose capable hands we felt very safe 2000 ft up.  Although the flight was excellent for assessing the area for management purposes it was also not a good thing as all of us now want to resign and become pilots!! “

(For those of you not up-to-date, Makhado used to be Louis Trichardt.)

These two Reserves being so close together, our valiant and experienced game counting microlight aircraft pilots, Prof. Jan Coetzee and Peter Vosloo set out to do them one after the other and flew their trikes from Microland – Potgietersrus – Makhado Military Air Force Base very early one Saturday morning, arriving at their destination by 11.00 a.m.

Imagine us – The Bateleurs – doing a game count for the South African Air Force. What an honour!  Thank heavens it all went extremely well as both pilots and the counters SAAF provided knew exactly what they were doing. The results were good – everyone was happy.

Then off to Ben Lavin they flew only to encounter (no pun intended) a truculent counter who refused to sign our indemnity form and was only interested in knowing who he could sue.  A very embarrassing situation for Ben Lavin’s Peter Menne who was the other counter.  Eventually the truculent guy agreed to sign our form when someone else volunteered to take his place.  The two planes had just begun to settle into their grids when poor Jan Coetzee got the brunt of this guy’s upchuck. Yuk!  But a good lesson to learn for The Bateleurs – never take unwilling and nervous passengers.  Unfortunately this impacted on the reliability of the numbers of game counted which Peter and Jan found substantially less than on their previous count two years earlier and attributed to poaching – but WESSA could not accept the figures as accurate, quite understandably.

But just to show you what dedication and expertise goes into counts like these, let’s include here Jan’s ‘flight issues’ which he put out to all involved before the mission:

“Flight Issues:
Game counting in Flurian Reserve Counting details:
GPS grids have been constructed with flight paths running N/S, with the two aircraft flying 250m apart.  Grid points are available in text file format if needed for statistical interpretation of counting results.
Please note that game counters should be supplied with suitable clipboards and pencils. It is essential that these clipboards and pencils be tethered so that they cannot be lost overboard.  Clipboards that are blown overboard will go through the propeller and will result in a forced landing.
Counters should have on their clipboards a list of all the animal species in the area, allowing them to add a tick mark behind each observed specimen. It is not practical to expect counters to do more extensive writing than this when sitting in an exposed position in a flexwing aircraft.
Counters should dress warmly, preferably with a wind-proof jacket, since they will be sitting fully exposed to the airflow.
Indemnity forms to be signed by all passengers before flying.
 
Jan Coetzee”