Changes at Home

Several changes and new features have been added to The Monachus Guardian and its parent site, www.monachus.org:

• Readers visiting the news area will be quick to realise that Monachus schauinslandi has deserted its temporary habitat under the International section to colonise its own Hawaiian News.
• Without the benefit of maps, compasses or GPS systems, some readers have complained about getting lost during our journeys through the monk seal’s world. Wherever possible, maps have now been added for orientation purposes (rest assured that we will not identify cave locations or other potentially sensitive information).
• Due to increasing demand, fact sheets on the Mediterranean, Hawaiian and Caribbean monk seals will soon be posted under the new Monachus Profiles section.
• Readers of The Monachus Guardian will no doubt have realised that a new section, Monachus Science, was added to the journal in the last issue. Depending on contributions, this will now become a regular fixture.
• We are constantly adding new titles to the Monachus Library, allowing instant access through online browsing or downloading. However, we are all too well aware that numerous articles, papers and reports, focusing on monk seals, have yet to be lodged at the Library. If you wish to make your work available to a growing international readership, please contact the librarian@monachus.org.

Apology

In the December 98 issue of The Monachus Guardian, we promised to make the proceedings of the UNEP/MAP Arta conference available in the Monachus Library (or, to give it its full title, the United Nations Environment Programme Mediterranean Action Plan Meeting of Experts on the Implementation of the Action Plans for Marine Mammals (Monk Seals and Cetaceans) Adopted Within the Mediterranean Action Plan). UN institutions tend to move in slow and mysterious ways, however, and despite assurances, we have yet to receive the report in electronic format. Nevertheless, we hope to make it available in due course.

Monk Seal Classic Re-Issued

Due to increasing demand, The Monk Seal Conspiracy has been re-published in its entirety on the Internet by Iridescent Publishing. The critically-acclaimed book, focusing on political intrigue and other obstacles affecting front-line conservation in the Eastern Aegean, can be found at http://www.iridescent-publishing.com. ‘A passionately written and entertaining book...’ according to John Harwood in New Scientist, ‘…we need books like this to remind us how easy it is to believe that complacency is really pragmatism.’ Quote of the Month: On How Conservation Projects are Won or Lost...