Dear participant,
Thank you for joining. At this moment there are no commitments to joining other than you will be emailed by me on any items regarding the project.

At this moment, we are seeking recognition by as many national IPY committees as possible in support of our intention of interest to the international IPY committee. The important issue right now is that internationally and nationally areas of interest will be defined soon and it is important to be recognized as an interesting potential for science and IPY. My own assessment is, that this will smoothen future requests for national support enormously.

In this view, it is important to contact your national IPY committee. On the form to the international IPY committee, it is asked if the national committee supports the initiative. I hope to get support from the Netherlands but have asked to go to a similar procedure to all people joined. Please use a combined action together with other people which can join the project. Email adresses of people named on the website can be send to you via email. The easiest way is to just send the plan as it is now, to the national secretariate. Adresses can be found on www.ipy.org or on http://www.biol.rug.nl/loonen/ipy under initiatives. Any suggestions for changes in the plan are welcome.

Please notify me on any reactions or initiatives, so I can mark these on the website: http://www.biol.rug.nl/loonen/ipy

In short, the aim of the project is: 1. Geographic variation in infections, parasites and immune system functioning in birds 2. An effect study on individually marked wild birds 3. Modelling future scenario's of geographic variation and relating the findings to climate change, nature management and human health and economics.

After having spread the inititive to IPY commitees, we will be waiting for reactions. In the meanwhile it is important to keep contacting interested people and ask them to join the email list. If we get some support, we have to write a full proposal before June 2005.

With many thanks, yours sincerely,
Maarten Loonen