Thursday June 17 INTRODUCTORY PRINCIPLES

7:30 am: Breakfast

8:30 – 10:30 am: Ecosystem Health as a Discipline, a Practice, and a Condition.

Presenter: Val Beasley, University of Illinois.

Beasley introduced concepts of ecosystem health and conservation medicine, and challenged us to consider how vibrant natural ecosystems yield sustainability and benefits to society, and how human systems have caused ecosystems to become dysfunctional. We were then asked to think about where we are in human history, and the roles and responsibilities of the veterinary profession, government, academia, the corporate sector, grassroots organizers, and other groups in implementing innovative new strategies to accelerate our progress through the current crisis to an era of ecological recovery.

10:45 am – 12:00 pm: Linkages between Human Health and the Environment

Presenter: K. Gilardi

The majority of emerging infections diseases in humans are zoonotic. We discussed what causes a pathogen to jump from animals to people. How humans contributing to this phenomenon, and when and why is it not natural. Gilardi then discussed the interrelatedness of ecosystem health and human health, focusing on examples of where and how ecosystem disturbance and loss of biodiversity impacts human health and well-being. It was all about the one health initiative.

12:00 pm: Lunch followed by tossing around the Frisbee.

1:00 – 2:30 pm: Mitigating civil disparity and poverty

Presenter: Patricia Erickson, University of Vermont

Erickson described the mission and operations of a non-profit organization she and her husband Jon Erickson established in the Dominican Republic called Batay Libertad, which strives to improve the health and well being of a Haitian community through education and health delivery.

2:45 – 4:00 pm: Transfrontier Conservation

Presenter: Steve Osofsky, Wildlife Conservation Society

The development of Transfrontier Conservation Areas (TFCAs) to further the conservation of biodiversity and sustainable development through the harmonization of transboundary natural resource management is a priority for SADC (the Southern African Development Community). A key economic driver behind TFCAs is nature-based tourism that seeks to maximize returns from marginal lands in a sector where southern Africa enjoys a global comparative advantage. However, the management of wildlife and livestock diseases (including zoonoses – diseases transmissible between animals and people) within the envisaged larger transboundary landscapes remains unresolved and an emerging policy issue of major concern to livestock production, associated access to export markets, and other sectors, including public health, in the region. A large portion of this talk centered on the prevalence of BSE in south African wildlife and the challenges that the presence of this disease presents when trying to sell meat to European countries.

4:15 – 5:00 pm: Grassroots Soccer

Presenter: Jon and Pat Erickson

We discussed the tactics that Grassroots soccer utilizes to make children in developing countries aware of HIV. We participated in games that are used to illustrate how the disease can be spread and how people with the virus are often treated poorly.

7:00 pm: Dinner

Evening: OPTIONAL viewing of the PBS film "State of the Planet's Wildlife."

LAKERS WIN! LAKERS WIN! LAKERS WIN! – That sums up the rest of my evening