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Presidential Quarterly Update

By IZE President Chris Peters

January 2004

Rotterdam Zoo, Netherlands
c.peters@rotterdamzoo.nl

Dear IZE members,

On behalf of IZE, Annette Berkovits, President and I wish you all a very HAPPY NEW YEAR!

First, I would like to share with you, the wonderful news that Robert Olasson, who served as IZE President from 1994 to 1998, was honored with the Gold Medal of the British Empire for the excellent work he has done as a zoo educator. Robert will be presented this prestigious award at Buckingham Palace later this year. This honor is also a great recognition of zoo conservation education professionals. It is up to those in our profession to strongly stimulate a worldwide awareness of nature conservation.

2003 was a difficult year for zoos worldwide. The bad economic situation, the war in Iraq, and threats of terrorist actions resulted in a worldwide economic recession, which negatively effected the zoo community. Many zoos were forced to reduce expenses and slow down or temporarily halt the development of new projects. Conservation of nature also lost its political priority in many western and western orientated countries.

2004 will hopefully be a better year for a revival of the world economy. It is during these hard times that we must gather our strength, renew and profess our beliefs on the importance our nature conservation. The importance of sustainable use of natural resources, global warming, protection of the last uninhabited natural areas and the restoration of eco-systems and many other issues must be brought to the attention of politicians, CEO’s, businessman and the masses of the ordinary people worldwide. This last group is especially important as a target audience for zoo education. Therefore we need a stronger and growing IZE organization with the most dedicated members possible.

I would like to ask everyone to be as active as possible in encouraging new members to join us, contributing ideas for making our organization more valuable to its members, participating in the upcoming IZE Conference in Hong Kong, and writing interesting articles for the IZE Journal. IZE cannot function well as a professional association without your help and involvement.

Chris Peters
IZE President-Elect