Re: An Elephant is Faithful 100%

I can donate some time.

The best email for getting in touch with me about this is
chris(at)metatrontech(dot)com

Josh Berkus wrote:

>Folks,
>
>I recently received the following appeal from the African Elephant Database.
>They need help migrating to PostGIS and building out their application.
>
>I, personally, cannot imagine a more compelling project which deserves the
>PostgreSQL community's collective help. The elephant is our mascot! Plus
>the AED folks introduced the idea of making this a general OSS project for
>species conservation databases.
>
>Who's available?
>
>---------------------------
>I'm writing with to explore the possiblity of a collaboration between
>Postgresql, PostGIS and the African Elephant Database (AED) of the IUCN/SSC
>African Elephant Specialist Group (AfESG). Please allow me to begin by
>giving you a little background on all those acronyms, in reverse order.
>
>The AfESG is a group of elephant experts from across the African continent
>who, aside from their daily jobs, disinterestedly lend their skills to
>provide technical advice on elephant conservation and management. The
>mission of the AfESG is to promote the long-term conservation of African
>elephants throughout their range, and the group focuses its efforts on
>capacity building, alleviation of human-elephant conflict, compilation and
>dissemination of technical information, and the development of elephant
>conservation strategies. Led by a volunteer chair, the AfESG has a small
>secretariat in Nairobi, Kenya. Please see http://iucn.org/afesg/ for
>details.
>
>The AfESG is one of the most active of over 120 Specialist Groups of the
>IUCN Species Survival Commission (SSC). The largest conservation grouping in
>the world, the SSC is a worldwide network of over 7,000 volunteer experts
>working to conserve the diversity of species found on Earth. The SSC is
>responsible for the production of the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.
>See http://iucn.org/themes/ssc and http://www.redlist.org.
>
>The SSC is the largest of the six commissions of IUCN - The World
>Conservation Union. IUCN is the world's largest and most important
>conservation network. The Union brings together 82 States, 111 government
>agencies, more than 800 non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and some
>10,000 scientists and experts from 181 countries in a unique worldwide
>partnership. IUCN's mission is to influence, encourage and assist societies
>throughout the world to conserve the integrity and diversity of nature and
>to ensure that any use of natural resources is equitable and ecologically
>sustainable. The World Conservation Union was founded in October 1948
>following an international conference in Fontainebleau, France. IUCN HQ is
>in Gland, Switzerland. See http://iucn.org/.
>
>The African Elephant Database
>The AED is a geographical information (GIS) system used to maintain an
>accurate and up-to-date record on the distribution and abundance of African
>Elephants. The AED is regularly updated, with data on elephant range and
>numbers constantly being solicited from wildlife authorities and experts
>across the continent, and a major report is produced every three years and
>made available in the AfESG website (see http://iucn.org/afesg/aed/).
>
>The AED currently runs in ESRI ArcGIS 9.1., in a personal geodatabase (MS
>Access) format. We obtained ArcInfo through one of ESRI's conservation
>program grants - but soon we were being asked to pay for maintenance charges
>in excess of USD3,000 per annum. Despite these costs, we are considerably
>constrained by the limitations of the set-up - including the MS Access 2Gb
>size limit. If we were to upgrade our configuration to a full geodatabase
>would involve acquiring ESRI's Spatial Database Engine (SDE) plus a
>commercial RDBMS such as Oracle, DB2 or MS SQL server, at a one-off cost of
>several thousand dollars and annual maintenance fees to match.
>
>Such costs are well beyond our reach, we are hoping to build a more
>sustainable solution using open source software. Although opensource GIS has
>not evolved as much or as quickly as opensource relational databases, we do
>have some hopes that a suitable system could be developed to maintain the
>AED. The AED is the most comprehensive species database in existence, and we
>believe there would be value in developing a turnkey solution that can be
>used to maintain monitoring information on other species for which there are
>relatively good data.
>
>We've got the elephant and the database in common. If you think a
>collaboration could be productive and mutually beneficial, please let me
>know so that we can begin to explore the options.
>
>I look forward to hearing from you.
>
>Sincerely,
>
>Julian Blanc
>Manager, African Elephant Database
>IUCN/SSC African Elephant Specialist Group
>Email: julian(dot)blanc(at)iucn(dot)org
>Web: http://iucn.org/afesg/
>--------------------------------------------------
>
>
>