Symposium at the university and SCB-ES committee reports - Board Meeting in Rome – 1st day.

Europe Section Board is having its regular semi-annual meeting in Rome between 8 and 10 February. Starting with a symposium organized at the University, the Board discussed the achievements of the previous months.

Symposium is about to start

Before the opening of the official meeting, a seminar was conducted by the Board members at the University of Rome for invited students, academics and conservation professionals. The seminar was hosted and organized by Piero Visconti, an SCB Board member (currently now in Cambridge) and  Carlo Rondinini at the Department of Biology and Biotechnologies of Sapienza University of Rome.

Conservation hot issues also with European relevance were presented like IPBES, green infrastructure, CAP reform, optimizing forest management to preserve biodiversity and the impacts of agri-environment schemes on grassland biodiversity.

In addition to the professional lectures, SCB and the Section was introduced by the coordinator, Barbara Mihók to the audience. The idea of the establishment of an Italian chapter was apparently supported by the participants of the meeting- let’s hope we will soon can foster its birth as the next European chapter.

Skyping with non-attending BoD members
(from r to l: Mikko, Piero, András and Barbara)

After lunch and having the fabulous Italian espressos, the Board began its discussion on last months progress.
ECCB2012 was agreed to be a success in scientific terms, and the Section successfully recruited more than 280 new members during the congress. However, in financial terms ECCB had raised some challenges which had to be overcome in the last months.

Committee reports
The Policy Committee’s members visited the Sumava National Park and backed the current protest again the exploitation of the forests with professional support. Regarding the Roadless Initiative (RI), study and further work is going on to expand it to a global scale, presentations and events were promoted by Kriton Arsenis including COP 11 CBD: Hyderabad, while Nuria Selva and Stefan Kreft presented the RI  at IALE conference in September in Potsdam. Discussion of Green Infrastructure with DG Environment was attended by Guy Pe’er.  Chapter and Management Committee reported on the ongoing chapter activities by the Swiss and the Hungarian chapters organizing national conservation meetings.  The Communication Committee started to build up a strategy and an active membership by Guy Pe’er, newly elected chair. Rob Marrs said farewell as a Chair of Education Committee, replaced by Piero Visconti.The Student Affair Committee's chair, Nuno Curado is also leaving,, following a very active period.  The Mediterranean Committee formulated a statement after ECCB2012 and works on recruiting interested members from Europe. A Mediterranean symposium is under organization by the committee for IALE 2013.

In the evening, the Board had a magnificent Italian dinner at Emilio’s helping the members to gain momentum for next day discussions on IPBES, ICCB2015 and so on...

Enjoying the Italian dinner
(from l to r: András, Mikko, Bege, Piero, Guy, Barbara and Judit (András's wife)