"Refining the Relevance of Resource Management" will be the theme for the 74th North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference, which will be held March 17 through 21, 2009, at the Crystal Gateway Marriott, in Arlington, Virginia.

The Conference Steering Committee is pleased to announce the four Special Sessions that will follow the event's Opening (plenary) Session. The Opening (plenary) Session will take place from 8:00 to 9:30 a.m., Wednesday, March 18. The Special Sessions, which will run concurrently from 9:45 a.m. to 12:00 p.m., are:

Under increasing pressure from agricultural interests to address rising food prices, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) appears to be considering allowing a penalty-free, early release of land enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), according to the Wildlife Management Institute. USDA Secretary Ed Schafer recently announced that the timetable on making a decision on this for the 2009 crop year has been accelerated from a late August/early September target date to late July and possibly sooner.

Conservation groups are hoping to cause a developer to relocate a planned Dale Earnhardt, Jr.-affiliated racetrack and Motor Sports Park on 2,600 acres near Mobile, Alabama, reports the Wildlife Management Institute. The groups, including the Mobile Bay Audubon Society, Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC), Mobile Baykeeper and the Mobile Bay Sierra Club, are not opposed to the planned development, they just don't want it located on an area rich in wetlands beneficial to wildlife.

At the annual meeting of the Western Governors Association (WGA), in Jackson, Wyoming, at the end of June, action was taken to preserve wildlife corridors, in the face of population growth and development, reports the Wildlife Management Institute. The governors approved a wildlife corridors initiative report that offered a series of recommendations, including identification of important corridors and the critical habitats they connect, collaborative planning to keep the corridors intact and a standardized mapping and data-collection system to be used across the region.

Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) biologists have found strong evidence of a reproducing gray wolf population along the eastern edge of the state's northern Cascade Mountains, reports the Wildlife Management Institute. On July 8, while conducting howling surveys in Methow Valley, the biologists received responses from numerous juvenile and adult wolves, indicating a breeding pair or a pack. If confirmed, this would mark Washington's first documented case of a resident gray wolf population since the 1930s, when wolves were extirpated from the state.

States in the Northern Rockies are in the process of finalizing wolf-hunting regulations after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) removed (delisted) wolves from the endangered species list earlier this spring, reports the Wildlife Management Institute. Idaho, Montana and Wyoming have released draft recommended quotas for hunter kills, but whether the hunts actually occur will depend on the status of a lawsuit filed by environmental organizations.