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Robert D Sluka, Ph.D. leads A Rocha’s Marine Conservation Programme. He is a curious explorer, applying hopeful, optimistic and holistic solutions to all that is ailing our oceans and the communities that rely on them. Robert’s research focuses on marine biodiversity conservation, plastic pollution, and fisheries, particularly marine protected areas. The ultimate goal is to glorify God through oceans and communities being transformed using holistic marine conservation.

30th June 2015 | Chris Naylor | 0 comments

Postcards from the Middle East by Chris Naylor: 5. Conservation conversations

We were often asked to study the wildlife of areas in need of conservation, but even more often groups came to Aammiq to see how a community dialogues and decides to restrain itself from more and more consumption of land, resources, and wildlife to the benefit of all and for a heritage to be passed on to future generations.

Categories: Postcards
31st May 2015 | Chris Naylor | 0 comments

Postcards from the Middle East by Chris Naylor: 4. Visitors drop a bombshell

“You are breaking the mould. Abu Charbel, like many others, thinks the church should keep to traditional areas of work.” “But what about priorities?” I pressed. “What is the most important thing? Preaching, poverty relief, or conservation of rare species?”

Categories: Postcards
30th April 2015 | Chris Naylor | 2 comments

Postcards from the Middle East by Chris Naylor: 3. Mission impossible

It was a transformed class that reconvened under the shade of the ash tree a couple of hours later. It was like conducting an orchestra to establish the learning objectives of the lesson; the wetland provided invaluable services to the human communities of the Bekaa, it contained rare and beautiful species and it needed protection. We didn’t stop there; questions tumbled from the class all the way back to the bus.

Categories: Postcards
31st March 2015 | Chris Naylor | 2 comments

Postcards from the Middle East by Chris Naylor: 2. Bedouin hospitality

The tent was dark but warm inside, a simple wood stove providing a flickering light. The bitter, piping-hot coffee was in an elaborate brass pot. Most of the year they lived in Homs in Syria but each spring, and sometimes in the autumn, they would get the tent out of storage and make the trek to the Bekaa for extra work.

Categories: Postcards
15th March 2015 | Peter Harris | 2 comments

Postcard from St Helena

St Helena is a sobering place to ecological eyes. In the early 17th century the Portuguese landed goats and in a hundred years they had reduced huge areas of lush landscape to bare rock. In the centuries that followed, we have made the world itself an island where the goats of hyper-individualism, corporate greed and short-term political ambition are roaming more or less unchecked.

Categories: Postcards