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September 29, 2006
"It's a community job," states new Saba Conservation Foundation (SCF) Manager Jan den Dulk. He emphasizes that the island's conservation efforts, both in the National Marine Park (SNMP) and over its network of trails, will only be successful if the community agrees with and supports the effort.
On August 1st, Den Dulk took over the helm of the SCF and the SNMP after the positions were combined when they both became available at the beginning of the year. A big help in the huge task will be the fact that the Canadian native speaks both Dutch and Spanish, being of Dutch/Chilean extraction.
SCF Board President Johanna van't Hof said, "The board and staff are very pleased with the new appointment of Jan as manager, we are sure that his qualifications and experience the future of the SCF and the SNMP are in good hands."
With only a few days on the job, Den Dulk is getting to know daily operations and activities of the Foundation and well as his five staff members and various volunteers. He has already identified that a major task will be to create a Management Plan for the organization.
He brings a unique package of qualifications to the job: lots of field work and hands-on job experience coupled with expertise in more complex management situations in which the interests of ecologists need to be balanced against development ambitions.
Den Dulk graduated from the University of Guelph (near Toronto) in 1989 with a degree in Fisheries Biology and stayed on as a research technician in fresh and salt-water fish. Two years later he established his own environmental consulting company. He opened the fourth office of the growing company in Vancouver in 1995, but sold out to his partner a year later to work for the British Colombia government. He focused on concerns with the destruction of salmon spawning grounds and the restoration of this habitat.
In 2001, he switched gears and went to work for a very large environmental consulting company that was working with the oil/gas industry in the Edmonton area.
Den Dulk and his wife Shelley Lundvall, who is a marine biologist, then decided to refocus their lifestyle/career towards something that might be more personally rewarding. About this time they ran across the SCF advertisement on the Internet.
The couple has spent much of their careers in remote areas working in situations where the reconciliation of traditional views with progressive ecological concerns is a challenge. Den Dulk advocates an open door policy and will be reaching out to the community for ideas on best procedures to sustain Saba's natural environment.
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