Tributes to Gavin

Steve Osofsky

I find myself with writer’s block as I don’t really want to acknowledge that Gavin is gone. I have treasured our friendship and partnership over the years, especially the fact that we could argue vigorously and ultimately come to a better decision— and still enjoy a cold beer together. When I launched AHEAD at the IUCN World Parks Congress in Durban in 2003, there was no commodity-based trade (CBT) concept in the public domain, and Gavin was not part of that initial meeting. One of the focal issues at that launch was on how to address the obvious conflict between international beef trade policy based on foot and mouth disease control fencing in the southern African context and the migratory needs of free-ranging wildlife in the region and the (at the time) new vision for transfrontier conservation areas. It was an exciting period, and the forum yielded an excellent framework for a problem that had been intractable for decades. But we did not have a solution.

Below I append an email exchange that turned out to be transformational, laying the foundation for a partnership that would evolve and grow on through the present:

From: Gavin Thomson
To: Steve Osofsky

Dear Steve (if I may call you that),

Wilna Vosloo has told me about the meeting you are holding at Pestana Kruger Lodge on 9-10 March and, basically, I am writing to ask whether I may attend?
You do not know me I think but I worked with Richard Kock on the PACE Programme in Nairobi for 4 years and know about you through him (recently attended his range-lands meeting at the London Zoological Society).

My particular interests are epizootic diseases, particularly those with a wildlife component, and the effects they have on rural development with a particular emphasis on international trade in animal-derived commodities. I am also personally well acquainted with most of the participants at the meeting. Apart from all that I have a keen interest in the development of the GLTFCA.

I would be happy to make a presentation on trade perspectives or a related issue but understand the programme is pretty booked up and so would be quite content to confine myself to participation in the discussion. Of course, I am also happy to pay my own expenses in connection with attendance.

Hope you can fit me in.
Best wishes.
Gavin

From: Steve Osofsky
To: Gavin Thomson

Dear Gavin-

It would be an honor to have you join us- absolutely. I am of course well-acquainted with your critically important and highly relevant contributions.

Do you need me to send you any further details, or has Wilna provided them? Thanks for making the time to come (and Wilna- thanks for alerting Gavin to the forum).

I will let you know if a speaking slot becomes available, but at this stage your active participation in what we hope will be a very interactive forum would be great!

Thanks very much for contacting me.

All the best,
Steve

Steve Osofsky, DVM
Wildlife Conservation Society- Field Veterinary Program
Senior Policy Advisor, Wildlife Health
WCS AHEAD Coordinator

I’d actually first met Gavin years before, at the 2001 joint conference of the Wildlife Disease Association and the Society for Tropical Veterinary Medicine held in Pilanesberg National Park, but I have a vivid memory of him finding a (then) young American vet asking his advice about work at the livestock / wildlife interface about as annoying as a tsetse fly. Gavin did not recall that encounter when I asked him about it years later (who remembers specific tsetse flies?), but that ‘first date’ was a bust. He and I came a long way in the next 20 years.

Obviously the CBT principles which were Gavin’s brainchild became the clear solution to the core challenges AHEAD was trying to address. Over the years, Gavin and I developed a deep respect for one another (I developed a deep respect for him, anyway), and I think it’s fair to say our working relationship was truly symbiotic. I am no virologist and certainly no FMD expert, and he didn’t have my patience for creating enabling environments for bringing people together from often opposing sectors to consider new ideas, to work together instead of against each other. Gavin obviously brought the most critical new idea— he had both the CBT concept and the gravitas that was essential to, after many, many years of science-based advocacy and policy work, eventually convince key colleagues in the subregion and in Europe that CBT was not a solution to be feared or mocked (as it was in the early days in some corners), but an out-of-the-box approach that did not penalize those farmers in Africa who happened to live near free-ranging wildlife. And it was always clear that Gavin cared deeply about the rural farmer’s plight, as well as about wildlife surviving and thriving in Africa — he saw the critical importance of a balanced, resilient approach to land use, which of course cemented his role as a core member of the AHEAD team.

I won’t delve into the many challenges faced, often related to bureaucratic or political hurdles, large and small. I will note that the 2011 release of “Beauty and the Beef: Achieving Compatibility between Wildlife Conservation and Livestock Development” was a real turning point for our efforts, and a bona fide “labor of love” on the part of great colleagues like Bedelia, Koos, Mary-Lou, Mark, Shirley, Mike and many more (AHEAD had provided an initial seed grant for the project back in 2008). Gavin and I and other team members worked on that script together, and I can honestly say that we’ve used that film hundreds and hundreds of times ever since— under trees with a generator in a poor village as well as in the halls of officialdom in Paris and Washington, D.C. Of course we all wrote scientific papers together, but that film taught me the importance of telling a good (true) story.

Gavin of course lived to see CBT become an accepted concept, including by SADC itself, and he was actively working with many of us in places like Ngamiland, Botswana on the details of implementation, with an emphasis on training (something he excelled at). Our last AHEAD-related meeting together (photo provided) was in Maun in 2019, focused on the CBT Gap Analysis our team had recently completed with our government partners. At the end of the meeting, I asked Gavin to stand up, and reminded all attendees— including many local livestock farmers— that we owed all of our progress to him, “the Father of CBT.” He got a standing ovation, which of course was well-deserved, and he clearly got a bit emotional (not something I saw a lot). I of course did not realize at the time that that was the last trip we’d share.

Gavin helped set us upon an important journey, one that I hope and believe we will be able to continue upon. Our ongoing progress will honor Gavin and all he cared about. This is a very sad time, but I feel as motivated as ever to see the vision Gavin helped shape become the reality we have been working towards. I'll miss him greatly.