The 79th North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference will be held March 10-15, 2014, in Denver, Colorado. The Conference Steering Committee is seeking ideas and participation from professional conservation interests to help develop the conference agenda. In particular, recommendations for topics, potential co-chairs and presenters for four Special Sessions are invited. Ideas for prospective plenary keynote speakers are also welcome.

With congressional leadership signaling their support for getting a new farm bill in place within the next several months, activity has begun in earnest to develop legislation that can be enacted this year. The 2008 Farm Bill expired on September 30, 2012, though many of its provisions were extended for one year in legislation that was passed in January to avoid the looming fiscal cliff. The Senate and House Agriculture Committees released their bills on May 9 and 10 respectively and debated the bills in committee this week, according to the Wildlife Management Institute.

Evidence that climate change is impacting species and ecosystems in the Northeast Region is growing. These impacts pose significant challenges to the future conservation of our fish, wildlife, and habitats requiring managers to improve conservation tools and modify management strategies within a changing climate. The most urgent question that needs to be answered before others can be fully addressed is: which species and habitats are likely to be vulnerable to, or benefit from, the changing climate?

The Gulf Coast Prairie Landscape Conservation Cooperative (GCP LCC), one of 22 LCCs across North America, was established to advance the efforts of federal, state, tribal and non-government entities to conserve the natural and cultural resources of the western coast of the Gulf of Mexico and the Oaks and Prairies, Edwards Plateau, and Tamaulipan Brushlands regions of Texas, Oklahoma, and northern Mexico. The GCP LCC initiated six science projects in 2011 and 2012 to provide critical information needed by agencies to protect fish, wildlife, and habitats across this region.

When I was growing up in central New Jersey, deer were a constant in my family's life. I vividly remember the weeklong firearm buck season with my grandfather's hunt club, culminating in hanging the bucks with all the hunters lined up for a picture after the closing day. I recall racing a large buck on the back of my horse through the woods behind my house one time, and watching does and fawns emerge in late spring in our pastures. But then, I also remember that throughout the year, deer were nibbling on the Christmas trees, corn and soybeans on the family farm.

Lakes and wetlands in Alaskan National Wildlife Refuges (NWRs) provide habitat diversity in boreal forests and critical breeding habitats for millions of migratory waterfowl and shorebirds in North America. Widespread reports of lake drying in the current warming climate suggest that breeding habitats may decline. Any loss of these breeding habitats may have local effects on biodiversity and on subsistence and sport hunting economies as well as far-reaching effects along migratory routes that extend to more southerly parts of North America, South America, Asia, and Australia.