Welcome To Bugwood -- Africa !!!

Situation

We realize that many Africans do not have reliable, or in many cases any, direct access to the World Wide Web (WWW).  However, we feel that the availability and ready access to reliable and accurate information and materials dealing with Integrated Pest Management (IPM) is of great importance to successfully implementing these new technologies.  Individual IPM practitioners, intermediaries and/or users do not require direct access to the WWW to use these materials, if selected materials can be acquired by a colleague, duplicated and provided to them as printed or electronic documents.  Implementation of alternative, unfamiliar and new technologies can be facilitated when individuals involved in producing and managing trees have a clear understanding of the production system and possible ecosystem stresses, including insects and disease organisms, in which the tree(s) and shrubs are grown.  It is also imperative that insects and disease organism and their impacts be correctly identified.  Because of the potential impact that insects and disease organisms can have on hosts, timely delivery of accurate biological and management information is essential.  Likewise, the availability of good color pictures of each organism greatly aids managers in correctly identifying organisms and in making management decisions.   Of paramount importance when acquiring and delivering IPM information, is to insure that only credible, accurate, and well referenced  information is made available to users.  The quality control issue is an extremely important one that is very time consuming and difficult to implement and maintain.

Proposed action

This web site was constructed as an eastern and southern African IPM demonstration site for viewing by attendees at the African Integrated Pest Management Communications Workshop in Nairobi, Kenya on March 1-6, 1998.  This site is being designed, and proposed by personnel associated with The Entomology and Forest Resources Digital Information Work Group at The University of Georgia, College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Tifton, Georgia USA as a sister site of the Bugwood -- USA World Wide Web s ite located at: http://www.bugwood.caes.uga.edu/.

The site visually demonstrates what we view as possible applications of existing and evolving electronic technologies to improve communications, and support implementation and utilization of Integrated Pest Management in agroforestry and forestry in eastern and southern Africa.

Background

The Need For Food and Fiber:  Deforestation, soil fertility depletion, poor management practices, and forest pests seriously affect the capacity of the land to produce forest and agricultural products needed by the rapidly expanding African population.  Currently more that 90 percent of the domestic energy use in East Africa is from wood provided by the forest and agroforestry plantings.  Without the food and wood provided by agroforestry, the human needs for food and fiber would further stress the production abilities of the indigenous and industrial/commercial plantations, especially in the dryland of Africa.

Agroforestry is a collective name for land use systems and technologies in which woody and other perennials (trees, shrubs, palms, bamboos, etc.) are deliberately combined on the same land management unit with herbaceous crops and/or animals, either in some form of spatial arrangement or temporal sequence.  In agroforestry systems there are both ecological and economic interactions among the different components (Mulofwa 1994).

Pest Impact:  For many years the forests in Africa were not seriously affected by damaging pests.  However, in  recent years severe losses have been caused by the accidental introduction of exotic pests such as the cypress aphid, Cinara cupressi (Buckton); the black pine aphid, C. cronartii Tissot and Pepper; the pine woolly aphid, Pineus boerneri Annand; and the leucaena psyllid, Heterosophylla cubana.  When these insect pests arrived their impact was especially severe due to the absence of natural enemies and the weakened condition of their host trees caused by drought and poor forest management practices.  Both forest plantations and agroforestry plantings have been devastated in some areas.

Integrated Pest Management (IPM) in the forest context can be defined as the maintenance of destructive agents, including insects, at tolerable levels by the planned use of a variety of preventive, suppressive, or regulatory tactics and strategies that are ecologically and economically efficient and socially acceptable.  It is implicit that the actions taken are fully integrated into the total resource management process -- in both planning and operation.  Pest management, therefore, must be geared to the life span of the tree crop as a minimum, and to a longer time span where the resource planning horizon requires (Waters 1974).  Application of IPM tactics to reduce the impact of forest pests requires considerable information which has not been available in Africa.  The need for increased information and communication on IPM throughout Africa has been documented in several workshops and conferences held during the 90's.

Several past workshops and conferences have emphasized the need for "regional cooperation in training, research, quarantine services, exchange of technical expertise and information.".   In 1996, The Tree Pest Management Network for Central, Eastern and Southern Africa was formed with the secretariat residing in Kenya at the Kenya Forestry Research Institute (KEFRI).

IPM Implementation Impediments: Application of information technologies can reduce the limitations to implementing IPM in eastern and southern Africa that results from:

1. a lack of communication and coordination between professionals and intermediaries both within and between countries;
2. limited availability of quality, synoptic information about forestry, forest insects and diseases and forest practices specific to eastern and southern Africa;
3. fragmentation of and difficulty in obtaining the forest IPM resources that are available;
4. the inability to obtain and modify the available information to suit the needs of practitioners and users;
5. the lack of quality images (pictures) relating to these forest issues for use in illustrating IPM materials. This is particularly true for insects and disease organisms [Quality pictures are, in our opinion, extremely important additions to educational materials to insure that correct identifications are made and that appropriate management tactics are implemented.];  
6. timely acquisition of printed materials is often limited by: costs, physical availability and distribution issues;
7. limited ability to locate, distribute and deliver needed information to educators, intermediaries and users on a timely basis;
8. the lack of funding to implement information, communication and coordination of IPM activities.

Bugwood -- Africa

This web site is partitioned into several sections to address some of the impediments to forest/agroforestry IPM implementation identified above.

In the Newsboard section we propose to develop and implement a WWW-based newsboard/information exchange system to provide posting of communications and responses by registered members.

In the Fact Sheet section we intend to provide a consolidated set of concise, factual information summaries dealing with insects, diseases, host selection and other aspects of forest management appropriate to the areas of concern.  We propose to compile these fact sheets by developing partnerships with agencies which have already developed and published these information sheets.  However, it will be necessary to write/develop new ones as well.  We intend to modify the format and layouts of, and implement the existing fact sheets to be consistent in format and to include citable references.  Additionally, we feel that it is imperative that quality, color pictures must be incorporated into the fact sheets in addition to the line drawings contained in some of them to enhance the information content and utility of these sheets for identification purposes.  Notice that we provide fact sheets in dual formats, one for on-screen viewing in hypertext markup language (HTML) and one version for quality printing as Adobe Acrobat (PDF) files.  Additionally, we feel that it is important that, when appropriate and possible, to provide multiple language versions of the fact sheets (currently, English, French and Swahili).  Currently, we have loaded a few example sheets following this format.

In the Reference section we will provide:

1. a glossary containing the definitions and terminology used throughout this site and in common use in forestry and agroforestry across Africa;
2. selected publications and reports appropriate to IPM implementation in Africa; and
3. a listing of ongoing or recently completed forest/agroforestry IPM projects in Africa.

The Contact section will contain information about:

1. Bugwood -- Africa Principal Contacts;
2. a listing of IPM Service Providers such as identification and library services, training material, workshops, and material and equipment supplier addresses and contact information;
3. contact information for international, regional and consulting services that are multinational in scope; and
4. a country-by-country governmental organizational contact list of forest IPM information and service providers.

The Links section, will like many other sites, contain a listing of what we feel are appropriate and complimentary links to other World Wide Web sites.

Future

Other aspects of information technology that we would like to implement are:

1. a database containing a range of uses and characteristics of the many host tree and shrub species available that would be searchable by usage, environmental constraints, etc.; 
2. either link to or duplicate ecotype, rainfall and other maps of interest that could be used in conjunction to the searchable database listed above;
3. a database that would allow users to lookup and obtain alternate names for the insect, disease,  tree or shrub species of interest (e.g. scientific names to local or alternate names used for the species of interest);
4. an image database system for locating, documenting and accessing archived, high-quality images that will be maintained in The Entomology and Forest Resources Digital Information Work Group archives.  This would allow for not only documentation and identification of the images, but also access to them for use in a large variety of potential applications;
5. for computer users without on-line Web access, the development and packaging of Bugwood -- Africa as an off-line browser; and
6. use of other digital information technologies such as video presentations that can be delivered over the WWW or by CD-ROM.

Thank You:  G. Keith Douce, James D. Ward, Joe Mwangi and David J. Moorhead.