The Internet has in fact helped us in more ways than one - not only have we become devoted users but we have also honed our skills as creators of complex interactive multimedia WWW presentations.

Indeed, you can now find parts of Arabian Wildlife on the WWW since winning pictures from the Arabian Wildlife Photographer of the Year have been carried by the Web's first, most popular and award winning Photographic E-zine: Photon (which you can read on-line at http://www.scotborders.co.uk/photon/), and have been included in a Web presentation that has been created for the UAE. Plans are now afoot to place the whole magazine, including back issues of Arabian Wildlife, on the WWW.

That's all very well, you may reply, but what's all this about the World Wildlife Web - is it a figment of an over imaginative author's wildest dreams or is there some fragment of reality in the concept? What has this all singing, all dancing, WWW, actually done for wildlife? The answer is a great deal more than there is space here to cover. It is being used to assist public awareness on conservation issues, as a tool in education and research cooperation, and for management of conservation projects. Above all however it is becoming a vast source of regularly updated information on our Planet's natural world.

How does one access all this information that resides at the ends of more than a million intricate threads of an ever expanding web-linked network of computers spread all over the world? Despite the seemingly impossible task of finding what one is looking for - nothing could be simpler. In fact, I can often find things more quickly on the WWW than I can among my own traditional filing system and I could give many examples of how useful this has been to our own work.

The Whale Watching Web
Rauno Lauhakangas works in Finland at the Research Institute for Higher Physics. His daughter brought him on a whale watching trip a few years ago and so he was inspired to "do something to help save the whale". His Whale-Watching - Web (http://www.physics.helsinki.fi/whale/) is a good example of how the internet can be used to promote conservation. By using the WWW he has linked whale watchers, and their information, all around the world. When Arabian Wildlife ran its story on the humpback whale being rescued from a fisherman's net off Oman, I sent a summary of the story by e-mail to Rauno's server in Finland. Almost immediately the reply came back that this was being posted on the "Whale Watching Web". Within a few days my own e-mail box was filling up with messages from as far apart as New England in the USA, and South Africa. The most intriguing message came from Oman since Oman's commissioner on the International Whaling Commission (IWC), Mohammed Barwani, was already hooked up to the Net and had read the World Wide Web account which described his own part in rescuing the humpback whale just a few days previously. He sent an e-mail to Finland, thanking Rauno for covering the story and the server in Finland automatically copied the message to our e-mail address in Ireland. This is a good example of how the technology links people of shared interests and helps to disseminate information across international boundaries with great speed.

Finding Wildlife Information
The Web is such a massive and intricately woven network of data that powerful search engines must be employed to locate what you are looking for. If for example, you just want to get a general idea of what information might be available under a certain heading then access one of the search engines such as Lycos or Yahoo, and type in the key word. Whilst writing this article I used Lycos to search under the heading of "Whales". Back came the reply that 2,191 documents had been found and the first ten were presented in brief abstract form. Thus, I was able to read a Preface to Roger Payne's book entitled Among Whales; a series of abstracts on particular whale species; information on a number of other whale books; on a Whale Adoption Programme; and several news releases with graphic details of how Pilot Whales are slaughtered in the Faro islands. I also discovered how to buy a computer game all about whales, the answers to a long list of FAQs (frequently asked questions) about whales and what reading material is available for young children on the topic of whales. Altogether, I calculated, it would probably take about six months of full time work to wade my way through all the internet information that is available on whales, but I could also locate specific items of interest very quickly.

It is true that a great deal of WWW data relates to the United States but, as more countries establish their presence on the Net, the balance will gradually be redressed. In the meantime, some of the data from North America is of interest to users in Arabia, if only as an example of how the WWW can be used in the fields of wildlife research and conservation work. One quick way into this mega-database is to access one of the overall listings of wildlife related sites. This then forms the start of a journey through cyberspace that can end with learning about how a particular national park is managed or how a group of school children are helping to save their local wildlife. A single general entry, such as "Birding on the Web" will carry one to a huge list of related sites and information sources from all over the world.

The Yahoo search engine first invites users to narrow down their area of interest. Thus, if one asks for a search under "wildlife" Yahoo will turn up 131 entries but each of these consists of long lists of classified sites, equating, in the end, to thousands of presentations.

The Arabian Net
But when it does come to Arabian wildlife, WWW relevant presentations are few in number. The proposal to place Arabian Wildlife Magazine on the Web is part of an effort to redress this situation. At the present time if one searches under the word "Houbara" no entries are found. Our Yahoo search under "Gazelle" turned up a single entry concerning a call for volunteers to count and mark gazelle in Israel.

If any of our readers are interested in joining in our efforts to create a meaningful database on Arabian wildlife, accessible over the Internet, they are invited to contact the Production Editor whose details are given at the beginning of this issue. Meanwhile the challenge to create a World Wildlife Web, linking biologists, nature-watchers, conservationists, photographers and all the others interested in our planet's natural world is still there, awaiting funding and commitment of resources. Could it be that this is one Internet project that will grow from the efforts of Arabia's wildlife enthusiasts? Don't forget, you first read it in Arabian Wildlife Magazine!