Notes

Williams-Groat Meeting

Patuxent National Wildlife Research Refuge

Patuxent National Wildlife Research Center

June 30, 2004

Attendance: Steve Williams; Chip Groat; Harry Hogden (TWS); Dan Ashe; Sue Haseltine; Bill Knapp; Judd Howell; Brad Knudsen; Marvin Moriarty; Paul Schmidt; Caitlin Burke (TWS); Tony Leger; Tom Franklin (TWS); Suzette Kimball; Bonnie McGregor; Monica Tomosy; Keith (?).

Introduction to Patuxent NWRR: Brad Knudsen provided a brief overview of the refuge.

Joint USGS/FWS Employee Award: The Directors considered a concept document outlining a proposal for a joint award to recognize sustained commitment to cooperation between employees of the two agencies. The Directors decided to proceed with this award and decided that it should be prestigious and highly visible. They discussed the nature of the award and decided that the most appropriate acknowledgement would be to provide the employee(s) with $100,000 to support and further their work. This funding would be one-time and the award recipient(s) would submit a project proposal to support the award and ensure accountability. It would be issued every year and would be based on Directorate/Executive Leadership Team nominations from each agency. Action Items: Develop a final award announcement with appropriate guidance and criteria (FWS/USGS Personnel Offices); develop alternatives for “announcement” of award recipients, to ensure maximum exposure and visibility among peers and colleagues (FWS/USGS External Affairs Offices); consider involvement of professional societies, like TWS and AFS in the review selection process (Dan Ashe/Sue Haseltine).

Future Challenges: The Directors were briefed on the status of the Future Challenges project and the Future Challenges Symposium scheduled for August 10-12, at NCTC. They supported (with modification) the basic outline of the Symposium that is to center on the “Grand Challenge” of dealing with large scale and rapid ecological change, but focusing on four more specific challenges that the two organizations must work together to face effectively: Global Climate Change; Invasive Species; Water Resources; and Biotechnology. They emphasized that the topics of invasive species and water resources must be forward looking and not simply regurgitate what we already know, and are already doing. They agreed to review proposed agency nominations and outside speakers/participants, by Friday, July 2. No Directorate members were self-nominated during the nomination process, and the Directors expressed the strong desire to get participation from at least a small subset of Directorate/ELT members. Action Items: notify selected participants and also those not selected (Bill Knapp/Sue Haseltine); proceed with planning of the Symposium (Future Challenges Team).

Bird Banding Lab: Monica Tomosy, the newly selected BBL director, presented a status update. She reported progress in moving to the new Oracle client server system. She reviewed the status of staffing and reported that a new staffing and organization plan would be available in July. The “1-800” number is now operational in Mexico, but they do not currently have Spanish-speaking support to handle calls from non-English speakers. They will be meeting, this summer, with representatives from Ducks Unlimited, Mexico, and developing an outreach and education plan, while they develop the capacity to handle reports in Spanish. It was reported that USGS has added (????) to the BBL base budget, in FY 03-04, and that although the demand for bands and banding information continues to increase, they now have a 1-year supply of bands in all sizes (including hard metal bands). They have $95,000 in a working capital fund to deal with unanticipated needs. In the long-term Monica Tomosy indicated that they would be working in better integrate research and monitoring efforts into BBL; placing more emphasis on analysis; considering extension of efforts into South America; and continuing triage but looking to the future needs of the Service and the banding community.

Bird Breeding Survey: Keith (????) gave a status report on the BBS. He identified future needs and focus in several areas: more formal training and certification as a requirement for data acceptance; review of routes and identification of gaps in coverage; trend analysis; and implementation of a relational database. Sue Haseltine raised an exciting new cooperation between USGS, NRCS, FSA and the EROS data center with respect to the effective of CRP/WRP in the prairies and the potential for an extension of this effort to include and enhance BBS data for the prairies.

TWS MOU: Directors Williams and Groat signed an MOU with The Wildlife Society (Harry Hogden) that will place Service employees on extended detail to work with TWS and outline future cooperation and partnership between the three organizations. USGS is committing funding (up to $50,000 annually) to support this MOU. Action Item: develop a nomination and selection process to identify appropriate FWS employees for this assignment (Dan Ashe, Sue Haseltine, Tom Franklin).

NEAT Charter: Directors Williams and Groat signed a charter for the National Ecological Assessment Team or NEAT. This team is charged to design a science-based ecological assessment process for the Service, to recommend a unified implementation structure, and identify priority science needs to support this approach.

Patuxent Research Refuge and Wildlife Research Center: The Directors were briefed, and toured the Patuxent facilities. They called for the FWS and USGS to work cooperatively to develop a shared vision of Patuxent as a “world class” wildlife research center, in which expertise in migratory bird research and biological landscape design and planning would be focal points. Action Items: develop an overall timeline; a vision statement and document; a facilities plan based on that vision; and a marketing and communication strategy (FWS Region 5/USGS Eastern Region).