A workshop, "Bringing Bison Back: America's Last Big Game Challenge," is scheduled for 1:00 to 3:00 p.m., Monday, March 12, at the 77^th North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. It will examine the political, cultural and ecological steps necessary for bison to be restored, managed and valued as a wildlife resource on northeastern Montana's Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge (CMR) and other multi-jurisdictional landscapes.

Early this month, a bipartisan group of western U.S. Senators introduced a bill that would create a leasing program for renewable energy development on federal public lands. The Public Lands Renewable Energy Development Act of 2011 (S. 1775) is being led by Montana Senator Jon Tester and cosponsored by Senators John Risch (Idaho), Harry Reid and Dean Heller (Nevada), and Mark Udall (Colorado).

Representatives from the energy industry, conservation groups and county planning offices recently told members of the Western Governors' Wildlife Council (WGWC) that efforts to create the western regional "Crucial Habitat Assessment Tool" (CHAT) are already paying huge dividends. The CHAT is envisioned as a West-wide, seamless mapping system that identifies the highest value wildlife habitat areas and the corridors that provide connectivity across the landscape.

In its seventh year, the Conservation Leaders for Tomorrow (CLfT) program is conducting 13 workshops?3 as professional development events for fish and wildlife agency personnel, 1 for U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) employees, and 9 for Juniors, Seniors and graduate university students majoring in natural resource management disciplines.

On October 27, the Department of the Interior (DOI) and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) released a supplement to the Draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) for Solar Energy Development. The revisions make several key improvements to the plan by reducing the number and acreage within solar energy zones, establishing exclusion zones where development is incompatible with other resources, and clarifying the process for developing additional zones in the future, reports the Wildlife Management Institute.

On Wednesday, March 14, 2012, a special session focusing on the Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration (WSFR)?Program?will be held at the 77^th North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference.

Copies of the limited (500), numbered edition of the classic book, An American Crusade for Wildlife, still are available.

During the week of March 26-30, Colorado State University (CSU) will again offer its annual Wildlife Management Short Course, mainly for laypersons and agency personnel without wildlife training.