On 19th January Gerhard Damm received the prestigious St. Eustachius Medal of the Bavarian Hunting Association. BJV President Prof. Dr. Jürgen Vocke wrote in a personal message “that the medal was awarded for the expert and prominent promotion of connectivity of the three conservation pillars ecology, economy and culture so eloquently expressed in the CIC Caprinae Atlas of the World”. Wolf Pösl, chairman of the Schweinfurt branch of BJV (the paternal hometown of Gerhard Damm), added “that the CIC Caprinae Atlas differs from the run-of-the-mill hunting books by demonstrating how regulated hunting can achieve brilliant conservation successes through a combination of individual and communal efforts with science based management approaches.”

Gerhard Damm is a member of the Bavarian Hunting Association (Bayerischer Jagdverband, BJV) for over 50 years and still has his hunting roots in Schweinfurt, Lower Franconia, despite of decades living abroad. After spells in Bogotá, Caracas, Singapore, Tokyo, Jakarta, and Barcelona, the Damm’s settled down in Johannesburg in 1994. Gerhard Damm is active in the CIC since the early 2000s and was elected president of the Applied Science Division in 2011 at the General Assembly in St Petersburg and re-elected for this office at the General Assembly 2014 in Milan. Damm is Member of the Board of Conservation Force, Persian Wildlife Foundation and Rowland Ward and also serves in the IUCN Caprinae Specialist Group and IUCN Sustainable Use and Livelihoods Specialist Group; he is a lifetime member of the Wild Sheep Foundation, Dallas Safari Club as well as an associate life member of Boon & Crockett Club. Apart from that he is the founding publisher and editor of African Indaba, an electronic newsletter on hunting and conservation in Africa since 2003.