|
68th Midwest Fish & Wildlife Conference
December 9-12 2007
BE THE CHANGE
Manage Locally Conserve Globally™
The Conference theme is “Be The Change: Manage Locally, Conserve Globally”. Mahatma Gandhi’s “You must be the change you want to see in the world” was a call for local, individual action to make a difference. Likewise, Rene Dubos challenged participants in the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment to “Think Globally, Act Locally” suggesting that ecological consciousness begins at home.
We wanted to issue a similar challenge to fisheries and wildlife professionals at this conference. Thus the blending of these two ideas, the emphasis on local, individual action, and the imperative of putting local management efforts into a global perspective. What we do locally on our individual fish and wildlife properties or on private lands in our own states can and will have an effect on Midwest regional fish and wildlife populations and their habitat.
We are inviting attendees to explore ways to put their individual management actions into a larger context to benefit all fish and wildlife across the Midwest.
The challenge of natural resource professionals today is to manage for ALL fish and wildlife and their habitats. This goal can result in conflicting management strategies for habitats required by different species (e.g., managing for early or late successional forests).
One potential solution to this problem is to think and plan at different scales so management moves beyond the local scale towards management of sustainable and healthy habitats across a larger landscape, integrated with but buffered from human development. This solution can provide a model that can be emulated nationally and globally, particularly where natural resource management is in its nascence.
The theme of this conference will explore how thinking and planning at different scales can be used to manage for all species of fish and wildlife and their habitats across states, the Midwest region, the continent, and beyond. We are considering a variety of symposia topics to help emphasize this theme:
- Prescribed fire
- Lead impacts on fish and wildlife
- Urban fish and wildlife
- Coping with terrestrial and aquatic invasive species
- Aquatic organism passage
- Habitat fragmentation
- Landscape and watershed scale research, management and planning in the Midwest
- Emerging diseases and pathogens in fish and wildlife
The diverse and exciting program, unique setting, and special events promise that the 2007 conference will be one that you will not want to miss. So, please put the dates of December 9-12 on your 2007 calendar NOW, and plan to come and see us in Madison.
BEING THE CHANGE
The Midwest Fish & Wildlife Conference planning committee is committed to setting an example for meeting attendees and other conference organizers by the way we conduct this event. Some things we’re doing to make this event more resource friendly:
- No junk! No abstracts CD (they’ll be available online, and free wireless will be provided at the conference center), no meeting bag (we assume you have one), no t-shirt (it wouldn’t keep you warm enough, anyway), no giveaways of things that will clutter your life. Please see the Survival Guide so that you’re equipped for the meeting!
- Locally produced food- as much as possible, we are pushing the Monona Terrace to buy food from responsible local producers; we think you’ll be surprised by and pleased with our menu! Smart buying and healthy food will be better for everyone, including our finned and furred friends, than a lame give/ throw-away.
- Power for the conference will be provided from renewable sources.
- Our meeting purchases are made with responsible manufacturing in mind first, price second. The secondary costs of cheap goods are an insidious onslaught on the resources we work hard to protect.
We hope you appreciate these efforts, and find this meeting as comfortable, warm, and exciting as the meetings you’ve come to expect from Wisconsin hosts.
Thanks
Joe Hennessy
Local Arrangements Chair
MORE INFORMATION COMING SOON
|
