Welcome to the 79^th North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference. WMI thanks you and all the conference co-sponsors, exhibitors, state agency contributors, and special session organizers who are critical to help make this conference successful. I would like to offer special thanks to Bob Broscheid for welcoming us to Colorado and Jim Kurth and Ed Cantu who also join me this morning in the plenary session.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration Program, or WSFR Program, is the umbrella for funds collected under the authority of Pittman-Robertson and Dingell-Johnson Acts and continues to be the backbone of conservation in this country. However technological advances, inconsistent regional application and enforcement, and procedural loopholes in the laws that didn't even exist when they were passed are now threatening to cripple this vital source of state-level conservation revenue.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) are seeking comments on a proposed rule that would define the scope of waters protected under the Clean Water Act (CWA).

John Organ, past president of The Wildlife Society, champion of the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation, current Division Chief of the Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration Program for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and internationally respected biologist was presented with the Wildlife Management Institute's 2014 George Bird Grinnell Memorial Award for Distinguished Service to Natural Resource Conservation. The award was conferred on Wednesday, March 12, during the 79th North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference in Denver, Colorado.

Conservation Briefs is a compilation of short news stories of interest to Outdoor News Bulletin readers. The stories cover a number of issues that have developed in the past month or provide updates on issues that were featured in previous ONB editions. Each story includes links to online resources for more details on each topic.

This month:

A group of conservation organizations has joined the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the North Dakota Game and Fish Department and the South Dakota Department of Game, Fish & Parks to launch the "Prairies Conservation Campaign." The Campaign's objective is to bring attention to the dramatic conversion of grasslands and wetlands to cropland in the prairie pothole region, according to the Wildlife Management Institute.

The White Mountains to Moosehead Lake Initiative (the Initiative) is a project recently completed by the Trust for Public Land (TPL) through funding from the North Atlantic Landscape Conservation Cooperative (NALCC) Demonstration Projects.

By their very nature, seabirds embody the complexity of wildlife ecology and conservation in the 21^st century. They cross distinct ecological boundaries on a regular basis to forage and transit through international waters on a daily, weekly, or monthly time frame. The wide-ranging and transboundary nature of seabird ecology exposes these species to various environmental and anthropogenic forces such as contamination, commercial fishing, and climate forcing that also are transboundary in nature.