Communication and Outreach

A key priority for 2005 was Partnership Building and Outreach. This included:

- Further development and refinement of the Conservation Commons website
(www.conservationcommons.org); (greatly improved in 2005, and a Spanish version is expected in 2006)

- Presentations at major international meetings
(SBSTTA, IABIN, Society for Conservation Biology, Colin Bibby Lecture);

- Briefings to the Membership, other partners, and IUCN staff;

- Preparation of a journal article, along with future news releases;
Aug. 5 issue I4D (Information and Development, India)

- At least two meetings of the Conservation Commons interim steering committee,
planning for a full meeting of supporting organizations;

- Finalization of strategy and workplan (done in November 2005)

- Broadening of current stakeholders and generating additional endorsements
(Jan. 2006: 55 organizational partners and more than 100 individual endorsements)



Fundraising & development of tangible products

Fundraising efforts focused on a number of key projects designed to demonstrate the power of connecting distributed data and information systems in a dynamic, web-enabled information management system. Three specific projects were developed:

- Demonstrating Interoperability: The Conservation Commons (IUCN, GBIF, CI, GLCF, UNEP-WCMC);

- World Base Map of Conservation (NGS, IUCN, TNC, CI, WWF, UNEP-WCMC, GBIF, AMNH, WRI, NatureServe, WCS);

- ConserveOnline http://conserveonline.org/
Search engine is now powered by Conserve Online.
(TNC, CI-CABS, NatureServe, IUCN, AMNH, US Forest Service, Rainforest Alliance, SCB)