Catching up on old friends

In my various day-jobs over the last 14 years or so, international wildlife trade has always featured as a full-time or part-time preoccupation. Currently, in WWF, it's virtually full-time (with a bit of other work on tigers and pandas thrown in) and I spend most of my time working on issues relating to trade in animals. However, I'm a botanist by background and it was through one former college friend, Noel McGough, that I got interested in wildlife trade in the first place.

Noel went to Kew Gardens to work on plant trade issues in 1988 and he's been there ever since - much more career continuty than I've managed to achieve. Since then, I've been to see him in the gardens several times - if you haven't been to Kew you really should go, especially if you're in London in late Spring or early summer. At his suggestion, I applied for - and got - the secondment to Brussels to work on wildlife trade that was one of the high points of my career and a huge formative experience for my children (as well as providing the inspiration for the book I'm working on at the moment).

This week, Noel and other botanist friends are in my neck of the woods for a meeting of the Plants Committee of CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) so it's been a chance to catch up. Magdalena and I were even able to host a party on Sunday night. She did a delicious starter of a cake with courgette and goat's cheese; I made Caesar salad and chilli con carne (chilli sin carne for the vegetarian) and strawberry tiramisu. We spent Sunday cooking up a storm but were able to get out to enjoy the countryside around Divonne before our friends arrived (more about that in a future post). At the party afterwards, I drank too much red wine and Zubrowka (that delicious Polish vodka that, when mixed with apple juice, tastes like apple pie in a glass).

On Monday, another wildlife trade expert who has recently moved to Switzerland, Rob Parry-Jones, also hosted a dinner party for some of the visitors, together with his lovely wife, Pia. In this case, though, their lovely daughter, Aaliyah, stole the show. We had delicious vegetaraian food from Pia's home country, India.

The meeting has been going well - I have a sense of it making more progress than has happened at some recent meetings, as we grapple with issues such as Madagasacar's unique flora. That country has such an amazing amount of endemic plants - and animals - but, unfortunately, these are being plundered by rich collectors, while their precious timbers are being creamed for the Chinese market. So we all have to do what we can to help.

Another of my compatriots and fellow-CITES practitioners, Karen Gaynor, is also at this meeting, and will be able to announce officially that the next meeting will be in Dublin, hopefully around St. Patrick's day next year. Not the best time weather-wise, but then is there ever a good time in Ireland where weather is concerned?