Registration is now open [pdf]  for the 48th Annual Meeting of the Association of Tropical Biology (ATBC) and 2nd Regional Meeting of the Africa Section of the Society of Conservation Biology (SCB Africa). The Local Organising Committee of the Joint Meeting of the ATBC and the SCB Africa Section has the pleasure to invite you to join us for five days in Arusha, Tanzania to address this year's meeting theme: "Adaptability to Climate Change and Attaining the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) for Tropical Ecosystems". It will be the first ATBC meeting to be hosted in Africa; the first joint meeting between ATBC and SCB, and only the second regional meeting of SCB Africa. Notwithstanding 2011 is also the United Nations Year of the Forests. Website

Registration desk for ATBC-SCB Africa Section 2011 at ATBC2010, Bali, Indonesia. (© Pia Parolin)

Mongabay.com reports about a debate over the need to conserve forests versus converting them for industrial use that grew heated last week at Australian National University (ANU) between William F. Laurance, Professor at James Cook University, Chair of the ATBC Conservation Committee, and Alan Oxley, a former Australian trade ambassador, also a forestry lobbyist. Mongabay.com mentions that "Laurance blasted Oxley for representing himself as a moderate voice on forestry issues and portraying his World Growth International group as a humanitarian organization. He said that Oxley took positions supporting large forestry interests, rather than the rural poor."

• Debate over rainforest conservation gets heated by mongabay.com - May 18, 2011

We remind you to to submit proposals to organise Symposia and Workshops/Short Courses at the forthcoming 2011 Annual Joint Meeting ATBC-SCB Africa in Arusha, Tanzania. Submissions from relevant disciplines can be made within the broadest context of the meeting theme “Adaptability to Climate Change and Attaining the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) for Forest Ecosystems”. Deadline for submission is November 30, 2010. Please email Academic Programme Chair Norbert Cordeiro should there by any such questions. More information at the Meeting Website.

Wiley-Blackwell and the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation published a special virtual issue of BIOTROPICA to celebrate the International Year of Biodiversity. Among the selected articles, Robin Chazdon and colleagues stated that : "Lasting conservation efforts demand new alliances among conservation biologists, agroecologists, agronomists, farmers, indigenous peoples, rural social movements, foresters, social scientists, and land managers to collaborate in research, co-design conservation programs and policies, and manage human-modified landscapes in ways that enhance biodiversity conservation and promote sustainable livelihoods." That is a New Deal for tropical biologists in 2011 that has been declared the International Year of Forests by the United Nations.

• The “Cairns Declaration”
• Papua New Guinea suspends controversial grants of community forest lands to foreign corps by mongabay.com - May 06, 2011
• 5 million hectares of Papua New Guinea forests handed to foreign corporations by Jeremy Hance from mongabay.com - March 23, 2011 (link added on March 26, 2011)

(Photos : Examples of the biologically rich New Guinean biota (rainforest gecko, beetle, treefrog, butterfly © Rhett Butler; white cuscus © Darlyne A. Murawski; Raggiana bird of paradise © Ricardo Porven).