This note was written by Viv Pattison following Saturday night's African stew feast. Thank you to all who attended and all who have supported us as we prepare for the World Seabird Conference!
Thanks to everyone who came out on Saturday to our presentations and African stew feast! We had an excellent African Peanut Stew, made by Maureen Weddell, and many other goodies to go along with it. After dinner, everyone gathered around to hear Keith’s run-through of the presentation he will be giving to an international audience at the Second World Seabird Conference in Cape Town at the end of October, and to take a look at the poster that I will be presenting during two days of the conference.
Keith talked about the many activities we have been doing over the years, from seabird studies to invasive plant pulling, and also highlighted the fact that we could never have done all this without the hundreds of volunteers who have donated time and energy over the years. My poster also summarizes our activities and the involvement of volunteers and students from local schools. For this local event, I also talked about our 2015 field season, and showed photos of some of the interesting sights we saw, and some of the amazing wildlife we got to interact with in the spring.
It is very exciting that our small organization was accepted to present twice at the conference, as we anticipate that it will be a big gathering. The first World Seabird Conference, in 2010, had over 800 participants from 50 different countries!
Thanks again to everyone who has supported our fundraising efforts. Thanks to Maureen at the Visitor Info Centre for hosting and cooking, thanks to others who brought food, and thanks to an attentive audience of long-time supporters, past volunteers, and potential future volunteers! If you want to check out the poster that will be on its way to South Africa shortly, it will be displayed at the Visitor Info Centre until early October.
