The population and habitat viability assessment facilitators' course: A retrospective

The establishment and development of the Population and Habitat Viability A ssessment (PHVA) course at the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust is descr ibed. Through informal comments from participants on all courses, and feedb ack from a basic assessment from the 1999 course, areas of strength and wea kness relevant to both the future development of this particular course and the establishment of similar courses elsewhere were identified. The course has been well received and has gone through a series of progressive change s since 1995. The major weakness of the course is that participants wish th e course to be longer; at present they do not feel they have mastered the s kills of facilitation in the short time available (although this was never the aim, as the course is supposed to act as an introduction to a set of sk ills and an awareness of issues, the mastering of which is a lifetime's wor k). It was encouraging to hear from participants that many of them feel tha t they are putting skills learned on the course to regular use and that the y would strongly recommend the course to colleagues.