Question: If you did go to Zimbabwe what kind of work would you do to contribute to improve Zimbabwe`s agriculture and conservation?

Yvette Wilson answered on 22 Jun 2010:

(…sorry, I could have misinterpretted your earlier question, or maybe the answer didn’t go through so I’ve pasted my previous answer and elaborated a little bit more…get back to me if I’m not really answering your question)

There’s two main areas I would like to work in:
The first is in taxonomy, which is identifying and describing species. It may not sound important, but its HUGELY important as we can’t manage landscapes without knowing what is in them and how they interact. Part of taxonomy is also studying why a plant or animal occurs where it does. All of this is essential to developing good conservation policy. Currently there are very few taxonomists remaining and working in Zimbabwe.

The second main area is more in agriculture. I would like to identify/breed crop varieties that are suitable for the Zimbabwean environment, for example, those that are more drought tolerant and disease resistant. I would also study agricultural practices to try to improve them to decrease the degradation of the land and the use of pesticides and increase the output of farmers.

I’m not really sure which of these is more important though – and it would be difficult for me alone to do both! I guess at the moment I’m 3/4 trained in both of these areas of research.

My third wish is to help in the training of other Zimbabweans as the more minds focussed on these problems the better!

I’m afraid its difficult for me to go into more details at present as the main problems in Zimbabwe are political so its a case of waiting and seeing what happens and what opportunities there are for funding for specific projects in the future.