TBG Newsletter 1 - January 1991

At the AGM on 22nd September, a newsletter was promised, to keep members of the TBG up-to-date on what members were doing. I had hoped that this would be produced earlier, but it seemed sensible to delay it until further information was available about the Malawi trip. This is covered in more detail below.

Enclosed with this newsletter are several other documents. I have tried to gather together all the TBG pieces of paper that members might be interested in, and there is now a 'List of Available Documents' which is attached. Please ask for copies of any you would like to see, but all members are being sent copies of numbers 8 (Objectives), 9 (membership list), 10 (AGM), 11 (available documents), 12 (workshop), 14 (African literature).

The BBS Council is keen to see that its sub-committees and working parties are active, and so the President and Secretary (Mark Hill and Martha Newton) are both shown as members of the group and will receive all material that is circulated. In addition, the BBS at large will be kept abreast of our activities via the Bulletin, and I will be submitting an item to the Editor for the February edition.

An area we identified very early as needing work was the processing of existing tropical collections. David Long has now produced some guidelines for this, but to my knowledge nobody is yet pursuing this. Any offers? The list of UK herbaria with tropical collections is being added to slowly as information becomes available, and there may be one near you that requires your assistance.

The membership list contains all those who have at any time expressed an interest in the TBG. If you are not interested, please let me know so I can remove your name. Also, the addresses are in some cases taken from address lists which may not be up to date. Please let me know of any corrections necessary. Similarly I have added phone numbers where I know them; please fill in the gaps and make corrections.

Mt. Mulanje Expedition

Planning for this trip is progressing well. There are now 8 people interested, five from the UK (Royce Longton, Nick Hodgetts, Brian O'Shea, Ron Porley and Martin Wigginton) and three from Africa (Shaun Russell (leader), Liz Kungu (Kenya) and Z.L.K. Magombo (Malawi)). The trip will be from 12th June to 3rd July, and probably 4 excursions each of 3 to 4 days will take place, with single days between for processing specimens. Each excursion will be based on a mountain hut. The trip will take place during the Malawi winter, when the mountain weather is likely to be similar to that in Britain (with quite cold nights). It will be at heights of about 700m at the base to about 2000m.

An expedition proposal has been prepared which is being used as a basis for fund raising. The objectives of the expedition include making a comprehensive collection of bryophytes from the mountain from a variety of habitats and publishing a bryoflora, identifying sites of special bryological interest and making observations on the biology of ecologically important, rare or threatened species or communities, and promoting in any other way possible the conservation of the bryoflora of the mountain and the ecosystem of which it forms a part.

The particular interest in the mountain is two fold: firstly, its position as a biotically isolated island in the Afro-montane archipelago which extends from Ethiopia to the Cape, in which the bryophytes are virtually unknown (only about 80 records are published); and secondly, the mountain is subject to the familiar 'logging vs. conservation' dilemma, and confirmation of its bryological interest should help to confirm the need to designate it as an IUCN Biosphere Reserve. It currently isn't even a national park, despite its tourist potential.

The UK-based members will be meeting again at the end of February to confirm progress and discuss the more detailed logistics.

Next Newsletter

This Newsletter is not very long, but not a lot has happened in the last three months - and the workshop itself (22nd September) was a major milestone in establishing ourselves as a group. The next newsletter will probably be after Easter, and will contain further information on the Malawi trip, together with anything else you let me know about. Please also give your suggestions about what sort of thing you would like to see in the newsletter.

Brian O'Shea (coordinator)

TBG15/news1 - 03.01.1991 - BJO