Three keynoters will be featured at the Opening Session of the 75^th North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference, on Wednesday morning, March 24, at the Milwaukee Hilton City Center, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. As is tradition at this annual international meeting of leading professional natural resource managers, the Wildlife Management Institute (WMI) President, Steve Williams, will provide the welcome and opening remarks. WMI has administered the?North American conference?since its inception in 1936.

On January 6, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announced major reforms to the way the government manages oil and gas leasing on federal public lands, to improve protection for land, water, and wildlife, reports the Wildlife Management Institute. In addition, the Interior Department will create a new Energy Reform Team that will identify and implement future changes. Many of the reforms that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) will undertake follow the recommendations of an interdisciplinary review team that studied a controversial 2008 oil and gas lease sale in Utah.

This year, 2010, commemorates the 20^th anniversary of Partners in Flight (PIF). Although PIF's founders were enthusiastic and optimistic in 1990 about improved bird conservation, it is unlikely?they could have anticipated that nongame birds would become thoroughly institutionalized into the conservation culture of the United States.

U.S. Senator Max Baucus (Montana) announced the relinquishment of oil and gas leases on nearly 29,000 acres in the Badger-Two Medicine (BTM) area of the Lewis and Clark National Forest bordering Glacier National Park. The oil and gas leases held by Occidental Petroleum Corporation, The Williams Companies, Inc., Rosewood Resources, XTO Energy Inc., and British Petroleum were returned to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) on January 14.