A Recap -- History: As the "old regulars" know and some of you newcomers hopefully realize, the Hancock Wildlife Foundation set up the various Live CAMS, the background web pages and the Forums for you on the premise that we wanted to share this incredible vision of the wild with you. At the same time, from day 1, Richard Pitt and I schemed that ALL components of this site MUST be managed for and BY the participants. Richard has done this masterfully. No I did not mean that you the viewers have to manage the technical components -- that is Richard and Ken and on the Island Bob. I mean that under the supervision of Richard the keenest volunteers, our admins and other program supervisors and our many new (and hopefully many more to start contributing) Content Providers, have tackled this almost "thankless job" that I know many of them spend more than a full 8 hour day at! And all on a volunteer basis. None are paid -- probably not thanked enough and only chastised unreasonably by newcomers who simply don't understand either the volunteer nature of the work, the incredible time each devotes and how, like many positions in the world, only are called upon when something goes wrong.
Well I too almost feel guilty drawing this to the public's attention since I know most of the volunteers don't do it for the accolades but for the public good. Furthermore, since it is YOUR site and maintained by you all, I almost feel awkward even giving more thanks as I don't want it to be considered "a pep talk" -- I know you all work well past what is logical or desirable by your other family obligations. But anyway -- I do want to say you all do a marvelous job and so much contribute to the vision we have launched. More than that -- you are that vision. You all, volunteers and viewers, are the watchers of the wild, the stewards of our environment, and I thank you. I hope we get to build up in you more indebtedness to our earth -- our survival depends upon that.
A little personal update: as a few of you know I have had a health problem this past year and it has periodically raised its ugly head and totally incapacitated me for a while. At the same time we were able to get all the cams in place last fall and have extensive plans for this year. I hopefully am on the mend. I want to thank those again who so kindly have expressed best wishes, sent cards and flowers etc. -- even some marvelous chocolates!!! What made this all the more memorable is that, not was it just our overworked keeners who passed on their kind thoughts, so many I have never met or heard of did the same. Very gratifying and I thank you all. Your all have my particular appreciation -- particularly Karen, who is not just my "unofficial secretary" but has tried to "protect me" from now over 6000 unanswered emails that I will not possibly get to. I say this in case you have written a particular note and thought I would respond. I have always tried to do this unless it was answered on one of our web pages or addressed in the Forum -- I simply am down from the 17 hours a day, 7 days a week effort due to the health issues -- so I have to beg your forgiveness in not being able to catch up on the past emails. Karen and the other admins and volunteers are there to answer your questions. They of course do not have access to my emails so any very important emails in that unanswered 6000+ will have to resend it to me or Karen.
read on for more...
