New LHF executive director

LHF is pleased to announce that a new executive director for LHF has been found as successor to Fred Baerselman, in the person of Hans Kampf from the Netherlands. His nomination has been approved recently by the LHF Board. For many members of LHF and others in the national and international nature conservation world, Hans is a well-known person.

Hans Kampf

Hans originally had an education as an engineer in agriculture, land improvement and nature management, followed by ecological training on the job, and a lot of experience in large herbivore and grazing projects. He has been involved in LHF right from the start, when the predecessor to LHF,  the Large Herbivore Initiative (WWF Int.) was founded in February 1998 in Bialowieza, Poland.

Until July, 1st, 2009 he will continue as a senior policy advisor for the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food quality (team Biodiversity International). He has a broad knowledge and long experience working in nature management, nature development and ecological networks, both on  national and international levels. He travelled a lot across Europe and beyond ,  presenting papers on e.g. ecological networks and large herbivores and developing a network of colleagues and friends to ‘spread the message’ Of all the tasks, jobs, etc .in nature conservation that Hans has been involved in, in particular one should be mentioned; Hans  was for many years the secretary of the Dutch Government Advisory Committee for veterinary (large herbivore) issues in nature areas.

I, (Fred) have known Hans as a long term colleague since over 20 years. He is a dedicated and energetic nature conservationist, a pragmatic; stimulating organizations and individuals to translate paper into practice: “what’s impossible today, might be possible tomorrow,  or next week….….”.  
Hans as a naturalist likes bird watching and being astonished by nature on how beautiful and interesting nature is. You are invited to read more about Hans’ work and enjoy his pictures on his website:  http://www.grazingnetworks.nl.

Hans will start in July his formal work for LHF, but is already involved frequently ‘to learn the trade, training on the job’.
When Fred will step back as LHF director ( not real retirement, but staying about as LHF advisor..!), planned in October 2009, Hans will start as his successor; LHF Executive Director.

We, as LHF team, are happy to have Hans come on board and are very grateful that the Dutch Ministry of LNV supports his secondment to LHF.

The LHF team,
Fred, Joep and Caroline

Joep, Caroline, Fred

More about LHF

Eurasia once was the home of billions of grazing mammals; the large herbivores. Forests, wetlands, grasslands, mountains, tundra, steppes and deserts were inhabited by a wide variety of hoofed animals. Certain species used to migrate by the millions over thousands of kilometres as part of their natural behaviour. However, development of human societies has in particular during the last century, led to dramatic declines of numbers and ranges of most large herbivore species.
The Large Herbivore Foundation was founded to counter these ever increasing threats and to aim for conservation and ecological restoration.

LHF

• Conserving and Restoring the essential role of large herbivores in nature
• Dedicated to ‘Forgotten Wildlife’ in Eurasia
• Building partnerships for conservation

Vision

• ‘An Eurasian Continent, where people enjoy the benefits from ecosystems and landscapes, inhabited and shaped by viable populations of all large herbivores of the region, living in the wild’.

Geographical focus

• Palaearctic Bio-geographical region;  Europe, Mediterranean, Sahara/Sahel, Turkey, Arabian peninsula, Russia/ Siberia, Central Asia, Mongolia and China
• In the East; focus on conservation of ‘Forgotten large herbivore species’ and their habitats. In the West ; focus on restoration of species and habitats/ ecological restoration.

Kulan

Objectives

• To conserve and restore ecosystems and landscapes as habitats and ecological substrates for large herbivores
• To conserve and restore all wild large herbivore species in viable and natural spread populations
• To also use domestic substitutes of extinct large herbivore species, to restore the ecological functions of large herbivores in landscapes. De-domestication and re- wilding of these grazers will be part of this process
• To increase knowledge and appreciation of large herbivores by people.

Philosophy and Targets

To build and coordinate a (volunteer) network organization, with the aim:

• To exchange knowledge and experienceTo have an actual insight in status and threats of large herbivores and their habitats/ ecosystems
• To bring relevant parties together and facilitate cooperation.
• To use a seed money strategy to initiate and/or support projects in the field.
• To initiate and support policy and advocacy work, to advance the large herbivore conservation and restoration work.
• To communicate this work, with the aim to strengthen the conservation work, to high light the profile and work of the LHF foundation and to find (partner) support and financial recourses by donors and sponsors.

In the following web pages you can learn more about the organization and work of LHF, the field projects, the large herbivore species and other relevant information.