Firstly my apologies to anyone who entered the www.safaritalk.net on Tuesday 6th March: depending on exactly what time you accessed the portal page you would have seen it in various stages of maintenance and it is only now, 3 am GMT on Wednesday that the new format is up.

The portal page required this revision because the original had acted just as a temporary measure and the All Africa menu, which linked you out of Safaritalk, whilst useful was in fact used as a white space filler. Now that more content is coming into the site I took the decision to remove this menu and address layout issues that had been developing, namely the large amounts of white space and the fact that one had to scroll down to access all the areas in the centre column. Now the new layout places the 4 sections, Interviews, Articles, Conservation, Community Initiatives and Feature blogs, in quadrants and each is now colour coded for easier recognition.

And regarding content in Safaritalk, I am receiving some excellent feedback from Conservation entities on the ground and will be featuring many more over the coming weeks, both in the form of overviews, as can be seen with the De Wildt, SanWild and Wildlife Direct sections, and as interviews with directors and founders. And I can announce Safaritalk's newest partnership: The Cheetah Conservation Fund, details of which can be found here. Look out for an interview with Co-Founder and Executive Director Dr Laurie Marker coming soon.

And talking of interviews I have had the immense pleasure and honour of interviewing Dr. Dame Daphne Sheldrick of The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust (www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org) based in Nairobi. Dr. Dame Daphne Sheldrick is the widow of David Sheldrick M.B.E. famous Naturalist and founder Warden of Kenya's giant Tsavo East National Park. With a lifetime of conservation behind her and such unique experiences regarding the early days of Kenya's National Parks it is an interview well worth reading and I'll be publishing it here in the coming week.

Another interview that will be published soon is with Sarel van der Merwe, Chair of the African Lion Working Group (www.african-lion.org) a scientific body which incorporates the research of many projects being conducted on free ranging lions in Africa. In it he raises some interesting points and for those of you who love lions this is one to read.

So it has been a productive few days with the website graphically coming together: there still remain a couple of niggling issues that need to be resolved but they do not affect the functionality of the site and with the updating of content and various interviews I'm conducting they will have to take a back seat for now.

And if you have any comments or constructive criticism, please contact me via the email as I'd love to read your feedback on how things are progressing.

So, until next time, Safari njema!

The Game Warden