10 September 2024 - Guido Keijl & the Dutch strandings network have just been announced the winner of the ASCOBANS Outreach and Education Award 2024 at the 10^th Meeting of the Parties, which began today in Odense, Denmark.

Description of the winning candidate in the nomination form submitted to the Secretariat: 

"For approximately 18 years, Guido Keijl from the Naturalis Biodiversity Center has been one of the pillars of the Dutch strandings network. Not only did he operate on the technical side for the website walvisstrandingen.nl^[1] by verifying and validating the input for stranded cetaceans, but Guido also gathered lots of information from external sources, such as Facebook groups and news bulletins. Aside from that, Guido is a very well-known and appreciated person within the stranding network, and has put a lot of effort into stimulating others to contribute their sightings and strandings to the national database. As data on strandings is highly dependent on voluntary registrations, Guido his work and outreach has been of outstanding value to ensure the continuity of the registration and the quality of the data. 

Furthermore, he also made sure that all gathered data was summarized into a yearly report, giving insight in trends and noting possible deviations or shifts. He has published these reports without failure since 2009. His efforts have greatly contributed to the large database that walvisstrandingen.nl has managed to gather over the past 18 years.

From 2024 onward the website has been replaced by stranding.nl, and will no longer officially be regulated by Naturalis Biodiversity Center. Though, as Guido is mandated as a validator on the new stranding.nl website he is still connected to the stranding work and network. We are very grateful for his work and unwavering dedication and thus believe that the ASCOBANS award would definitely be well-deserved."

The aim of the ASCOBANS Outreach and Education Award is to recognize individuals or organizations that have contributed to promoting and supporting educational activities and to increasing public awareness to achieve a better understanding of the need to conserve small cetaceans.

Previous winners of the award are: Hel Marine Station (2005), Petra Deimer and Hans-Jürgen Schütte of the Society for the Protection of Marine Mammals (2007), Peter Evans of the Sea Watch Foundation (2009), Mats Amundsen of Sweden (2012), Whale and Dolphin Conservation (2016), and Marine Mammals Science Education project (2020). 

While the ASCOBANS Secretariat does engage in outreach and educational activities of its own, successful awareness raising is dependent on the efforts of various actors at national and international levels. Among these are governmental and other public institutions, non-governmental organizations and scientific and educational institutions.  Promoting awareness is an essential element of conservation work because the public is more likely to support recovery efforts if they realize that cetaceans are present in their local waters and that the animals’ conservation status is unfavourable.

The award was presented following a call for nominations, and the winner was selected by a jury established by the ASCOBANS Advisory Committee at its 28^th meeting in 2023.