The International Mire Conservation Group (IMCG) is an international network of specialists having a particular interest in mire and peatland conservation. The network encompasses a wide spectrum of expertise and interests, from research scientists to consultants, government agency specialists to peatland site managers. It operates largely through e-mail and newsletters, and holds regular workshops and symposia. For more information: consult the IMCG Website: http://www.imcg.net

IMCG has a Main Board of 15 people from various parts of the world that has to take decisions between congresses. Of these 15 an elected 5 constitute the IMCG Executive Committee that handles day-to-day affairs. The Executive Committee consists of a Chairman (Jan Sliva), a Secretary General (Hans Joosten), a Treasurer (Philippe Julve), and 2 additional members (Tatiana Minaeva, Stuart Brooks).

Viktor Masing (†), Hugo Sjörs, and Richard Lindsay have been awarded honorary membership of IMCG.

Editorial

The last IMCG Newsletter of 2003. Not with everything we wanted to include, but time is always running short, also here. We thought it wiser to provide you with a fresh Newsletter just before Christmas and to spend the cosy days to browse through the whole pile of books that still awaits reviewing. You’ll see more of it next year. Again we took the liberty to edit most of the contributions we received severely. We’ll do our best to publish the next Newsletter at the end of March 2004. Please send all your contributions, news, publications, etc. to us well before March 22, and with your help we will again prepare an interesting Newsletter. Please do not forget, there are some important deadlines for the 14th IMCG Congress in South Africa:place>:country-region> coming up. Abstracts need to be submitted by 15 January 2004:date>, and the deadline for early registration (reduced fees) is 29 February 2004:date>. See Newsletter 2003/3 or our homepage for detailed information.For information or other things, contact us at the IMCG Secretariat. Address updates should be sent to Jan Sliva (sliva@wzw.tum.de). In the meantime, keep an eye on the continuously refreshed and refreshing IMCG web-site: http://www.imcg.net

We wish you some very nice Christmas days and all the best in 2004.

John Couwenberg & Hans Joosten, The IMCG Secretariat

Botanical Institute, Grimmerstr. 88, D-17487 Greifswald (Germany)

fax: +49 3834 864114; e-mail: joosten@uni-greifswald.de

The IMCG bank acount : IBAN Number : FR76 1670 6050 0750 5170 9901 686; Bic Number (=swift) : AGRIFRPP867;

Name : Ass. International Mire Conservation Group; Address : 159 rue Sadi Carnot 59280 Armentières (France) ISSN 1682-1653

Editorial

We wish you some very nice Christmas days and all the best in 2004.

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