March 2019

Welcome to the 84th North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference. I want to thank all the attendees for taking time out of your busy schedules to participate in this conference. I offer special thanks to all the state agency, federal agency, non-governmental organizations, businesses, industries, and exhibitors for your financial support to help make this conference successful. I also want to recognize the special session chairs, workshop chairs, and the speakers. Thank you for your time and efforts to provide meaningful dialogue on the conservation challenges facing our nation.

The George Bird Grinnell Memorial Award for Distinguished Service to Natural Resource Conservation was awarded to Dr. Daniel Decker last week during the annual Conservation Administrators Luncheon at the 84th North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference in Denver, Colorado.

Elk (Cervus elaphus), one of the largest members of the family Cervidae, was the most wide-ranging of the deer family, roaming throughout most of the continental United States. However, the colonization and westward expansion of Europeans brought with them unregulated market hunting and significant landscape-level habitat changes that resulted in the extirpation of elk from the East. Prior to restoration attempts, the last known native elk harvested in the eastern United States was likely taken in the late 1800s.

One of the major research efforts for combating White-Nose Syndrome (WNS) in bats is to monitor bat populations, which includes identification by species. Monitoring bat populations of hibernating bats is challenging because of inaccessibility to all areas of the hibernacula and the potential of disturbance to bats during the counts. Furthermore, finding the hibernacula can be difficult. The summer maternity roosts can also be monitored, and possibly provide more accurate estimates of population trends due to the smaller concentrations of bats in the colonies. The summer roosts also offer data about female reproductive output. Like the winter hibernacula, data on summer roosts are lacking in many areas. Summer roosts offer an important conservation strategy for helping bats survive in areas affected by WNS – bats that can survive hibernation in WNS-infected hibernacula could be protected in their summer roosts and produce more off-spring that are possibly genetically suited for surviving WNS, like their parents.