Just to let everybody know I arrived well and have a roof, running water and yes, even internet once and a while. I'm staying at the WCS casse de passage with other scientists which is really nice, meet people, exchange ideas and get lots of tips on how to work here...
Chris Wilks has been showing me around and set up meetings for me. Already this morning we've met with WWF forestry officers, the DG of the Union for sustainable forestry in the country and so on. It has gone surprisingly swiftly with Chris opening doors everywhere he passes and who ever he calls, so I'm really very lucky he has taken a like to out work. As it seems, a lot of hard work has gone into plots and forest inventories here and people seem fairly open to the research we want to do. For one of the companies, we already have some verbal agreement for inventory access ;). Country is really very expensive though, costs the same as Europe ;(.
Also hope to get into the forest a few days, which apparently will be feasible, so that would be nice. Dividing the work in Gabon in two (ie reconaissance trip now followed by fieldwork later) seems to have been a very good approach, people would declare me mad if I were to land here and attempt to start immediately...
Ok, that's it for now!
Smiks,
Danae
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