Prof. Sian Sullivan ☮️ 🕊️ 🌱

☀️ A mega-🧵 with chapter links about #Etosha Pan to the #SkeletonCoast: #Conservation Histories, Policies & Practices in North-west #Namibia 🇳🇦 #OpenAccess, co-edited with Ute Dieckmann @UniCologne & Selma Lendelvo @unam_na @BathSpaUni @EtoshaKunene > openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647…

@mikegarson Your playing on this (and other tracks) is amazing!

Aladdin Sane was released 53 years ago today, and it still feels like yesterday. I didn’t fully understand what David had in mind when I walked into that session in 1973. He had this ability to hear something in you and place it exactly where it belonged. When we were recording the title track, I first approached it in more conventional styles. David stopped me and asked for the avant-garde side of my playing, the part that didn’t fit the standard rock piano vocabulary. I wasn’t sure how people would take it. He told me not to worry about that. He gave me the freedom to play. That was one of his great gifts. He let artists bring their full voice into the music without constraint, and somehow made it feel inevitable. So when people talk about that solo, I don’t just hear a piano part. I hear David recognizing something before anyone else did, and giving it the space to exist. For me, Aladdin Sane is one of the clearest examples of Bowie as an artist, a producer, and a truly fearless creative mind. I’d love to hear what this album means to you after all these years. Favorite tracks, memories, or moments that still stay with you... Photo by Brian Duffy

@rodneycloete You might also like this chapter about !nara use in the northern Namib - "Cultural heritage and histories of the Northern Namib / Skeleton Coast National Park"🙂 openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647…

Yes the !nara melon. It grows on a thorny, leafless plant that has been surviving on the Namib dunes for longer than recorded human history. The Topnaar people of the Kuiseb Valley have lived on it for over 800 years. The seeds are richer in oil than almonds. The flesh can be eaten raw, cooked, or dried into cakes that keep for years. A single plant can live for a century and produces without ever being watered by a human hand. The desert feeds the people who learn how to listen to it

Namibia is a dry country and you cannot drink Uranium! A Farmer like him should understand the importance of water.. Leaked documents from Forbidden Stories show SWAPO’s Herunga asked Russian agents for N$3 million to fund election day paying activists, printing T-shirts, transporting voters. President NNN thanked her “Russian friends” and asked for help done “cleanly.” Foreign agents interfered in our democracy. When I asked questions about this in Parliament, the Speaker BLOCKED me. Provide evidence first. Since when do questions need proof? That’s what questions ARE. Now the the SAME Russia is being handed a 25-year uranium mine in the Stampriet aquifer the drinking water for 80,000 Namibians. Acid pumped into your water. 30,000 times above WHO safety limits. Russia pays → SWAPO wins → Russia gets the mine → Your water gets poisoned → Anyone who asks gets silenced. We will NOT be silenced. Namibia’s water is not payment for SWAPO’s election. #Namibia

Are Namibia's insects declining? Anecdotal evidence suggests they are. This is an urgent call for research and action. conservationnamibia.com/blog/namibian-…

@davidbowie_news Love this album 🤩

David Bowie released his ‘Young Americans’ album 51 years ago today, on 7th March 1975.

Suro Ganuses and I have worked together since 1994. Suro is Indigenous Damara/ǂNūkhoen. I have learned loads from her, and through our wider collaborations. Here we are 🙂

Our co-authored article is called: "How conservation may make cultural heritage invisible: Intersecting on-site oral histories with land claims for settler #colonialism, #conservation and #tourism in north-west #Namibia" Abstract shared below ⬇️ See nje.org.na/index.php/nje/…

🌍 New co-authored article in the Namibian Journal of Environment - special issue on #Conservation and #Land (more below!) Cover by Clarance Geingob, who has completed multiple illustrations for research we're doing on one of the first anti-colonial Uprisings in north-west #Namibia (1897-1898)

Both Ruben & Jeff also have chapters in our Big Book "Etosha Pan to the Skeleton Coast" - now with over 2,700 downloads 🙂 See Chapter 5 and Chapter 8... openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647…

Highlights & Abstract here ⬇️ Led by Ruben Schneider, with Jeff Muntifering of @SRTNamibia & me of @BathSpaUni & @GobabebRSH as co-authors.

🦏 New #OpenAccess article in Biological Conservation! 'Community-based #conservation surveillance: an ethnographic analysis of the drivers & obstacles of local reporting on rhino & plains game poaching in Namibia' sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

@THEKaikaifilu @CWitvrouwen Most people I talk to don't really want this. The idea of sticking animal heads on walls is considered very weird. At the same time, living alongside eles can be challenging of course.

@SianSullivanUK @CWitvrouwen So do they want hunting or set up quotas?

Smallscale farmers in the Sorris Sorris conservancy say roaming elephants are destroying crops, water infrastructure and livestock, leaving their safety and livelihoods increasingly at risk. allafrica.com/stories/202508…

@CWitvrouwen Here's an image from that weekend in 1994. I was sitting on a kopje with people from the area. They were appreciative of the elephant, but also concerned about what impacts they might have...

Elephant moved back to the Ugab on Easter w/e in 1994, after about 50 years' absence. I was working with people there at the time. We watched the elephant moving into the river. It caused people to move their houses to higher ground (a lot of work!). A child was killed on way to school. It's caused a lot of challenges but of course tourists love to see the eles.

@daughterofsahel @Agrarian_South Looking forward to reading this!

How does Namibia manage to conserve the largest free-roaming black rhino population on communal lands? We interviewed the team from Save the Rhino Trust Namibia to find out more about the flagship Community Rhino Rangers Programme. 1/2 conservationnamibia.com//blog/conserva…

The spectacle of nature: "Our future as a species depends on urgent new evaluations of humanity’s relationship with the natural world. We have divorced ourselves from nature, yet we crave a connection with the very thing that we have turned our back on." theguardian.com/environment/20…

Also, Michael Wenborn & co-authors have written a great chapter about the challenges & possibilities of living with elephants... Here's the link openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647…

Longer version here, with more detail futurepasts.net/post/2017/02/1…

There are a variety of ways in which people live with lions & other predators; & also with elephants, rhinos etc. Altho' loss of access to land affects these strategies. Short article here about this kind of diversity ⬇️ theconversation.com/three-of-namib…