Representatives from many of the GOWRS Network organisations are travelling to Ostend for our first in-person meeting of the year. We will be hosted by the Wildlife Rescue Centre, Ostend, and many thanks to Claude Velter and Isabelle Allermeersch for making all the arrangements.
Our in-person meetings are an essential part of how the GOWRS Network operates. With members based in seven different countries, operating in as many different time zones, meeting each other in person allows us to be more creative and more productive as virtual meetings limit what can be achieved. Our meeting in Ostend will allow our working groups to work towards their objectives for the year. We will also be given a tour of the WRCO which will be new for some of our members; the picture below was taken during the last GOWRS visit to Ostend in 2017.
An important goal for us while in Ostend is to plan our second in-person meeting of the year in Singapore. This will be the week before SpillAsia 2026. GOWRS will have a booth at this event and we look forward to the opportunity of meeting old friends and new colleagues at this event.
We will also be running a table-top exercise using Wild-X with colleagues from Sea Alarm and OSRL. We would like to thank Hugo Nijkamp, Saskia Sesions, Daniela and Edel at Sea Alarm for collaborating with us on this and to Frankii, Paul and all at OSRL for their continued support for the GOWRS Network.
Each of the ten members of the GOWRS Network, Aiuka, Focus Wildlife, IBR, ProBird, OWCN, RSPCA, SANCCOB, Tri-State, Wildbase, and WRCO will be present for the meeting which will take place from the 13th to the 20th April.