With this November-December issue of IWMC-World Conservation Trust’s newsletter, we bring to a conclusion the much anticipated, first year of the new millennium. Throughout the ups and downs of our effort as global advocates for the principles of conservation of nature’s resources, social justice and the preservation of cultural respect and sovereignty, we’ve experience quite a bit. Hopefully, this holiday season will provide time and wisdom for all of us to take a minute to reflect on how best to achieve our goals while keeping to the moral and ethical high ground despite the not so stellar strategies and tactics of our opposition.

  Together, 2000 brought us many shared experiences, triumphs and frustrations. We endured the discussions and debate, and to a great extent enjoyed the camaraderie, at the 11^th Conference of the Parties to CITES in Gigiri, Kenya, and at the 52^nd Meeting of IWC in Adelaide, Australia. We met with our friends at the World Council of Whalers meetings in New Zealand and discussed issues of global importance at the 3^rd World Congress on Fisheries in China. We circled the globe meeting with allies on all continents.

  Certainly throughout the year we’ve seen longtime friends and colleagues step down from roles of vital importance to the conservation of the planet’s resources. We seen, and support with great hope for the future, their places taken by a new cast of vitally important players on this theatre we call earth.

  Above all, we saw what may prove the most important single incident of the entire year. I’m speaking of the public exposure by the CITES Secretariat of The Humane Society of the United States as an organization that thinks nothing of employing such duplicitous tactics as lying outright about the character and behavior of those nations that refuse to kowtow to the Animal Rights ideology.

  For years, the HSUS has postured as a "credible charity" working for the welfare of the environment and the animals. That credibility has suffered a tremendous blow. It is with a great deal of faith and hope that 2001 will bring more of the truth about such "credible" charities to the public’s view. Only when the deliberate distraction of selfish, ruthless, and power-hungry NGOs is revealed and brushed aside will the welfare of the earth’s humans, animals, and even its plants truly take center stage as our highest priority.�