I've been interested in a global registry of Conservation GIS professionals, and their work and talks, ever since the mid 1980's when Bettina & I were living in Gland, Switzerland and volunteering at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. I was working with Dr. J. Keith Rennie on how computers were going to be essential to making conservation and sustainable development effective. Dr. Rennie was working then on a new "IUCN Registry" project, designed to be a global computerized database of conservation expertise so that governments working on biodiversity or sustainable development plans could find professionals to help them. The Registry was based in part on the "Naturalists Directory International", a hardcopy volume published annually from 1877 into the 1970's. I used a recent version of this wonderful book myself in reaching out to fellow naturalists around the world when I first began planning my decade of
