The Wildlife Management Institute (WMI) along with Cornell University, the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (AFWA) Management Assistance Team, and staff from three state agencies is providing training on putting public trust into practice. The training consists of two webinars scheduled in March and a workshop in each AFWA region. The Western regional workshop will be held May 22 to 24 in Estes Park, Colorado. Workshops for the Northeast, Southeast, and Midwest regions are set for August. The training is designed to help state agencies improve their relevance, as recommended by the AFWA Blue Ribbon Panel. The first webinar, ?Wildlife Governance Principles Tools for Better Conservation,? will be held on March 15 and registration is now open.

A collaborative new partnership between the Appalachian Wildlife Foundation, the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources, and others is working to establish wildlife-related tourism in the southern Appalachian region of Kentucky and the surrounding states by building a state-of-the-art wildlife education facility designed to share with visitors the incredible natural resources of the region.

The 2017 North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference will host a workshop titled ?Bridging Science and Management: Maintaining Relevancy through Organization Transformation and Professional Development,? organized and sponsored by The Wildlife Society, the American Fisheries Society, the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, the USGS Cooperative Research Units, and the Wildlife Management Institute. This workshop will build upon the discussions of the successful 2016 workshop, ?Barriers and Bridges in Connecting Natural Resource Science and Management,? which was organized by the same coalition of sponsors. Scheduled for Tuesday, March 7 from 1 to 5 p.m., this workshop will focus on the many social, demographic, and resource changes facing organizations in the years ahead, and prospects for transformation to sustain organization relevancy and effectiveness through workforce training and professional development.

The Regional Conservation Needs (RCN) Grants Program funded project, The Northern Diamondback Terrapin (Malaclemys terrpin terrapin) in the Northeastern United States: A Regional Conservation Strategy, was recently completed and is available on the RCN project page.

A team of scientists from the Colorado Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, Colorado State University, and the National Park Service are developing contemporary models and aerial survey techniques for estimating sea otter abundance and distribution in Glacier Bay National Park.