Report of expenditures of USD 500 grant for woman activists of the WOLF Forest Protection Movement

(For a period from November 1999 until October 2000)

 

Narrative part

In November 1999 four women activists / students organized a one-week of activities at the University of Nature Sciences in Bratislava. It included organization of three lectures of experts in protection and ecophilosophy, information stand promoting WOLF’s work, fundraising money for the "Wolf Reserve" directly and through organization of paper recycling among students and university administration offices. This recycling activity has become a tradition and continues. They organized more information stands at the Earth Day and in June 2000.

At the end of November WOLF organized a lobbying seminar for WOLF’s activists in order to gain skills in a direct lobbying for proposed legislative changes among members of the Parliament. Half of participants were woman activists. They also participated at four WOLF’s national gatherings, i.e. in December 1999, and March, June and September 2000.

In December 1999 two woman activists organized a special fundraising action for the "Wolf Reserve" among elected members of the Parliament of the Slovak Republic. For the same purpose there were more than ten information stands organized all around Slovakia.

The most active woman activist was Jana Strnadova. Besides her involvement in the above mentioned activities she was a coordinator of an international project aimed at protection of large predators in the border area between Slovakia and the Czech Republic. She also did game monitoring and research work. She analyzed statistics of veterinary doctors and hunters and done a field research on the relationship between occurrence of wolves and distribution of Classical swine fever on wild boar in Slovakia. It was evidently proved that permanent occurrence of wolves in particular absolutely prevents existence and distribution of Classical swine fever. Her another research work was focused on analyzing a current diet of wolves in Slovakia from scats’ samples collected all around Slovakia.

In September 2000 Jana represented WOLF at the conference and seminar called "Large Carnivores of the Carpathians" and "Problems of large ungulates and carnivores in Ukraine" held in Ivano-Frankovsk in Ukraine.

She introduced our organization and made a presentation on a current situation of wolves in Slovakia, legal

status of their protection, population and on impact of wolves occurrence in particular areas on the health state of game in regards to results of her above mentioned research.

In the past twelve months there were four woman activists helping us occasionally in the office. They helped voluntarily with communication with members and organization of national campaigns and local activities, prepared and arrange sending invitations for activities to WOLF’s members, kept database of donors to theWolf Reserve and helped with accounting. She also participated at the workshop of Polish NGO focused on the wolf protection. The workshop was aimed at gathering field knowledge, verifying a situation of wolves at the Polish side of Beskydy and at impact of shooting wolves in the border area in Slovakia on occurrence of wolves on the Polish side of the border.

Expenditures

Item	Item	Spent in SKK / USD
1.*	Travelling costs	7,978.80/ 190.81
2.	Communication costs (phone cards, phone)	3,990.00/ 95.42
3.	Publishing costs (research results)	3,288.00/ 78.63
4.	Copying services	1,435.60/ 34.33
5.	Visa to Ukraine (for Jana)	1,013.00/ 24.23
6.	Photo materials	1,467.00/ 35.08
7.	Diskettes	108.40/ 2.60
8.	Bag for laptop	1,626.70/ 38.90
	Total in SKK / NLG:	20,907.50/ 500.00

 

* Travelling costs for six woman activists to lobbying seminar in Nova Sedlica, which was held in November 1999 and travelling costs for two woman activists to WOLF’s national gathering in December 1999.

Conclusion

Currently, there are two woman activists helping us voluntarily on a regular basis. Jana Strnadova, after graduating the University of Natural Sciences this year, started to help us on a volunteer basis in October 2000. She is preparing an information material on results of her research work and will be working on the wolf protection project. Other volunteer, Lucia Sepitkova is helping us with the accounting work. Other three woman activists come to the office according to particular needs and all of them help us with organization of national campaigns and local activities.

 

October 27, 2000