Kuni Masuda is Chairman of the FFI’s International Programs Committee and is also on the WSC Board of Directors.
International Programs Committee is busy localizing FFI web pages. Due to overseas members’ requests, we are translating key pages into German, Italian and Japanese covering 70% of current international members. Our international ambassadors are a great help. Kuni is also recruiting international presenters and workshop providers for our Virtual EXPO in November.
Here is a story Kuni told me about a person from the country of Georgia.
About three weeks ago, I received mail from our new FFI member in Georgia forwarded by Dave Peterson, Chairman of the Board. It’s not our state of Georgia here in the US. Georgia is a country located at the intersection of Eastern Europe and Western Asia. It is a part of the Caucasus region, bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north and east by Russia, to the south by Turkey and Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. It is a country of rivers and mountains, situated within Caucasus Range of Mountains on the south-east frontier of Europe.
His name is Lado Sakvarelidze who lives in Orkin, Georgia and principal of LLC Caucasus Ecosystem and a fly fishing & trout conservation enthusiast. He is trying to convince his government to open rivers in national parks for license based fly fishing (catch and release) in return for boosting conservation efforts within national parks and beyond. They are in the infant stage of the fly fishing and trout conservation movement and he deeply believes a new born fly fisherman is also a new born conservationist. His organization needs our help, our recommendation, references and supporting data to push for the social, environmental and economy benefits and uses for his work.
That said, we would like very much to support this new member from Georgia and assist him in organizing and mobilizing fly fishers in his country and we can learn more about his interests and needs and also provide more information about the benefits and opportunities that Fly Fishers International provides for our international members.
Lado, Tom Logan and I had our first zoom meeting to make him aware of our interest in conservation of trout in Georgia last week. He wants to learn from us and use us as his conservation planning model. It is my hope that this is just the beginning of an ongoing conversation about how FFI can be supportive to his efforts in Georgia.
“When we teach a person to fly fish, we just created a conservationist.” Lee Wulff