I was just switching off my computer for the last time in 2011, when I thought the moment deserved a bit more ceremony than that. So I grabbed my camera and stepped outside to catch an image from the front door here at the Centre. Here is a final blog posting, accompanied by an old year look up at the amazing east face of Table Mountain that towers over us during our normal working day.. Mostly it just towers while we get on with all of the hugely important things that we need to get on with in biodiversity research, planning, policy advising. Sometimes a visitor will remind us that the mountain is overpoweringly there, and we'll have to glance up and agree as enthusiastically as possible before we dive back into the virtual labyrinth behind our computer screens and meeting rooms to solve the problems that beset biodiversity conservation around the world. But right now I'm going to send this on its way and take a few days off and try to regain some perspective, take stock of the good and productive things that happened in 2011, lament some of the unfortunate ones (like the scratch on the lens of my dear dear G10), and work out what I do to improve the good to bad ratio. Let's hope that 2011 will turn out to be a year when we look more at the mountain, less at the politics of panic, and understand more deeply the economics of nature. Cheers.. Geo
