Afrotherian Conservation

It’s been a busy twelve months for the group. Sadly, 2015 started with the terrible news that Peter Vogel had passed away. Peter was a global expert on shrews but he was a long-term member of the group due to his specialist knowledge of otter-shrews; he was one of the few biologists to capture and study these illusive afrotheres. We include an obituary to Peter on page 8 and send our condolences to his family, friends and colleagues. Many group members have been helping update the IUCN Red List assessments for the smaller afrotheres under our charge, and we thank Andrew Taylor, our Red List Co-ordinator, for keeping us on track. Most of the tenrec section met in Madagascar in April to start developing an action plan for the Malagasy tenrecs (a workshop report is summarized on page 10). It gave PJ a chance to visit Andasibe, his main PhD study site, for the first time in 25 years and reminisce with old colleagues. There has been some restructuring in the group. We are now co-chairs, PJ having been officially appointed by the SSC Chair Simon Stuart in June. We undertook this change to better spread the workload and to improve the conservation activities of our group. We have divided responsibilities that best fit our interests and strengths. Galen will largely continue to deal with the information and research aspects of our group, whereas PJ will focus on developing and implementing conservation projects. The co-chairs’ roles are explained in more detail on page 13. One of the first things PJ did as a co-chair is to represent our specialist group at the IUCN/SSC Leaders’ Conference in Abu Dhabi, 15-18 September (See the Afrotheria News section). To help PJ focus on our conservation work, Chris and Mathilde Stuart have kindly agreed to take on the role of editing the next edition of Afrotherian Conservation. Their contacts are in the guidelines for submissions (page 17). We hope you’ll send them plenty of material for the next edition.