Daan Vreugdenhil

About

Lifetime conservationist, "PARKSMAN DAAN" VREUGDENHIL, PhD, spent 45 years dedicated to conservation of nature and environment. Currently promoting NATIONAL PARKS TOURISM. See:
https://www.nationalparks-worldwide.com

His work in both tropical and temperate regions includes experience in a variety of fields: multi-disciplinary management and planning of natural resources, seas and marine coasts (incl. scuba reconnaissance), multiple-use fresh-water systems, forest ecosystems, environmental impact assessments, GIS forest cover and ecosystem mapping, environmental monitoring systems and databases, ecotourism development and sales.

IYF Project Officer in 1969, joined FAO, in 1974, in projects in South America and Africa. From 1979, he worked himself up to the level of senior administrator with the Netherlands' Ministry of Works and Water (Rijkswaterstaat, Dutch equivalent of the USA Corps of Engineers), where he was responsible for three different water management programs over a period of 10 years: Wadden Sea, Water monitoring, Rhine management. In 1992, he joined the IADB. In 1989, he founded the forebear of the World Institute for Conservation and Environment, at first to provide ecotourism services in support of conservation, which in 1995, expended to integral conservation support, when Dr Vreugdenhil became its full time director. His assignments spanned Eastern Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia.

For the Vth World Parks Congress he led the IUCN task force on: “Comprehensive Protected Areas System Planning And Monitoring”. He designed the first the computer based protected areas analysis tool, “MICOSYS”, in 1992 for the World Bank, which includes a protected areas costing module for both investment needs and recurrent costs. With 10 years of high level government financing in the Netherlands, and 20 years of data collecting and financing analysis of protected areas systems of the world, Dr. Vreugdenhil is a leading authority on protected areas costing.