The Program Steering Committee for the 75th North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference has announced the event's four Special Sessions. The Conference will be held March 22-27, 2010, at the Hilton Milwaukee City Center, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and the Special Sessions will be held concurrently on Wednesday, March 24. They will follow the Conference's Opening Session that morning.

Steering Committee Chairman and Wildlife Management Institute Vice President Dick McCabe noted:? "The line up for Special Sessions at the next North American is impressive. The topics will be especially timely. Conferees may have a difficult time deciding which to attend."

McCabe added:? "The Steering Committee is very much appreciative of the many suggestions that were received from the community and which were instrumental in setting the agenda."

Anyone who might like to participate as a presenter at one of the Special Sessions (listed below), should contact the appropriate chair or co-chairs.

Ecosystem Service Markets: Funding Tools for Conservation

Co-chairs:
Joshua Goldstein
Colorado State University
Fort Collins
Joshua.Goldstein@colostate.edu

Matthew Dunfee
Wildlife Management Institute
Fort Collins, Colorado
mdunfee@wildlifemgt.org

Given current economic trends, publicly funded incentive programs for conservation-based land management in North America are ill equipped to combat market forces that encourage the conversion of natural resources on public and private lands into economically productive products and systems. However, the same economic markets driving the conversion of land into industrial, energy and crop production can actually expand funding schemes for conservation if they are aligned with the ecological systems that support them. Constructing markets around the fundamental ecosystem services (crop pollination, water purification, biodiversity, etc.) that have historically been free commodities to industry can capture the monetary value of those services and provide a framework whereby private industry can partner with state and federal agencies to foot the bill for conservation.

Ecosystem service markets, if designed appropriately, can increase and diversify funds flowing into conservation-based management of public and private lands and broaden the base of support for conservation beyond traditional constituents.

This special session will provide information on established and emerging ecosystem-service markets and the role they are playing in the development of a national climate change policy. Speakers will also discuss tools that natural resource managers can use to quantify and value ecosystem services, as well as provide a framework whereby private industry can partner with agencies and NGOs to begin incorporating ecosystem service payments into local and national land stewardship programs.

Active or Passive Management of Public Lands: Implications to Fish and Wildlife Conservation and Recreation

Co-chairs:
Rebecca Humphries
Michigan Department of Natural Resources
Lansing
Humphrir@michigan.gov

Gary Kania
Congressional Sportsmen's Foundation
Washington, DC
garyk@sportsmenslink.org

Federal lands in wilderness, roadless or other land designations that limit habitat management of those lands have both positive and negative consequences for fish and wildlife conservation and associated recreational opportunities.

Populations of wildlife species that require early successional habitats can be affected by designations that limit opportunities for habitat management activities. On the other hand, extensive public access can disrupt fish and wildlife populations, reduce reproductive success and can increase the likelihood of overharvest by hunters and anglers. However, inadequate public access can complicate efforts to control wildlife population levels through hunting and can severely restrict hunting and angling recreational opportunities.????

This special session will address the challenges and opportunities to fish and wildlife conservation and related recreation from various land designations affecting habitat management and public access to public lands. It will probe land-designation decision-making processes needed to compare and balance projected short- and long-term impacts to fish and wildlife and to societal benefits from these land designations. The session, in part, will consider landscape and societal implications as a result of exclusionary federal land designations, including the effects on:

• federal and state fire management and suppression activities
• coordination with state fish and wildlife agencies to meet habitat management objectives and effectively implement fish and wildlife conservation plans and invasive species control programs
• hunting, angling and other recreational participation opportunities and attendant satisfaction
• state and local economic cost/benefit

The Power of Partnerships in Bird Conservation: North America and Beyond

Co-chairs:

Terrell D. Rich
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Boise, Idaho
terry_rich@fws.gov

Kirk Nelson
Nebraska Game and Parks Commission
Lincoln
kirk.nelson@nebraska.gov

2010 will be the 20^th anniversary of Partners in Flight. This special session will focus on how partnerships are leading the way for bird conservation at the scale of North America and beyond. It will build on new analyses, data and other information collected for the 2008 State of the Birds report and for the 2009 Partners in Flight Trinational Vision for Bird Conservation in North America. The latter will be a conservation assessment of 900 species of landbirds (9 percent of the world's avifauna) that regularly breed in the United States, Canada and Mexico. This document will be rolled out at the North American.

Speakers will address past successes and issues that lay the foundation for where bird conservation is today, but the main focus will be on what is needed to conserve birds and their habitats from Hawaii to Newfoundland and from the Yukon to Chiapas.

What Does Green Really Mean?

Co-chairs:

Rob Manes
The Nature Conservancy
Kanapolis, Kansas
rmanes@tnc.org

John Emmerich
Wyoming Game and Fish
Cheyenne
john.emmerich@wgf.state.wy.us

The increasing national emphasis on renewable energy development has been largely fueled by the assumption that "green" energy systems and practices inflict little or no negative environmental impacts. However, accumulating evidence from current and past renewable energy projects indicates that scientists and policy makers may have underestimated the local and national scale environmental consequences of green energy initiatives. Given that the expansion of renewable energy has been identified as a top priority of the current administration and eight western states have already established "renewable portfolio standards," natural resource managers must be aware of the impacts that industrial-scale installation of green energy projects pose to fish and wildlife population and their habitats.

This special session will explore the effects of current and future green energy projects on fish and wildlife habitat and identify strategies to mitigate or minimize those effects. It will further address current policy and regulatory mandates driving the utility industry to invest in wind farms, biofuels technology, solar arrays and geothermal plants.