Plenary Session - SEAFWA 2008
Monday, October 13, 2008
Welcome:
Presented By: Carter Smith, Executive Director, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department
SEAFWA President's Address:
Presented By: Dan Forster
Our Partnership with Sportsmen:
Presented By: Rob Southwick, President, Southwick Associates
Topic description: All parties benefit in a true partnership. Rarely is there a better example of a partnership than the North American model of fish and wildlife management. Nothing that state fish and wildlife agencies do would be possible without support and dollars from sportsmen and industry. In return, the American public has some of the world’s best fishing and hunting opportunities just outside their door. Sportsmen and women are the key to this relationship. Each year, hunters and anglers provide nearly $2 billion to state fish and wildlife agencies in licenses and excise tax revenues. However, as with any relationship, we must continually nurture and strengthen it. Hunters and anglers have many recreational choices. They do not have to fish or hunt – and each year more choose not to participate. The trends impacting hunting and fishing will be presented along with potential solutions now being tested by fish and wildlife agencies.
Partnerships with the Outdoor Industry:
Presented By: Jerry DeBin, Director, Outdoor Marketing, Academy Sports and Outdoors
Topic description: Outdoor industry retailers and fish and game agencies share one very important goal: recruitment and retention of current and future customers. Jerry deBin brings a unique perspective to the topic. He is a Certified Wildlife Biologist and 22-year veteran of state fish and wildlife agencies. In 2007, he joined Academy Sports and Outdoors where he directs field and stream marketing for the company. The company actively seeks partnerships to promote the outdoors lifestyle and to enhance recruitment and retention. Jerry will share ideas for developing effective retailer partnerships in your home state.
Partnerships with Landowners:
Presented By: Rene Barrientos, Lone Star Land Steward Statewide Award Winner
Topic description: Private landowners are critical to conservation efforts across the United States. In Texas, where 94% of the landscape is in private hands, partnerships with landowners are key to meeting conservation goals. In 1991, less than 2 million acres in Texas were involved in wildlife management planning and currently there are more than 22 million acres enrolled under approved wildlife management plans. The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department works with more than 6,000 landowners who are implementing wildlife management plans across the state. TPWD recognizes exemplary land stewardship through the Lone Star Land Stewards program. Private landowner, attorney and rancher, Rene R. Barrientos operates an 8,000-acre ranch in South Texas and received the Statewide 2004 Lone Star Land Steward Award in recognition of his practices in habitat restoration, preservation and wildlife management. He will share his perspective on why these partnerships work.
Diversity Outreach Partnerships:
Presented By: Vanessa Oquendo, Human Dimensions Graduate Student, Mississippi State University
Topic description: Outdoor recreation involving wildlife and fisheries has been an important part of American lives. The United States has a dynamic population and will continue to change over the next few decades. Our population is getting older, becoming more urbanized, and becoming more ethnically diverse. As a result of these changing demographics, hunting and fishing participation has declined in the U.S. and will continue to decline unless we start recruiting marginalized groups into those activities. MSU student Vanessa Oquendo has gained an appreciation of wildlife and natural resources through her experiences living in other countries and through her education. She believes that wildlife management and conservation depends on a partnership between hunters, anglers, and all other stakeholders. She hopes to play an important role in wildlife management by focusing on recruiting more women and ethnic minorities to get involved with hunting and fishing. Getting those segments of the population involved in the management process will also ensure political support for wildlife and fisheries management and conservation in the future.
Urban Partnerships:
Presented By: John Davis, Conservation Outreach Coordinator, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department
Topic description: Our world has changed. As of May 2007, the majority of humans are urban. People decide the fate of wildlife. In this urbanized world, the rules have changed and have become ladened with layers of complexity. Fear, changing values, aesthetics, political fragmentation, and other factors all combine to create a crucible-like environment within which to work. This environment requires skills we were not taught in school. But like any organism facing environmental change, we must adapt, migrate or die. We must adapt to these changing demands on our discipline or risk becoming irrelevant.
Agencies and Academia in Partnership:
Presented By: Larry McKinney, Executive Director, Harte Institute
Topic description: As someone who started his career in academia for more than a dozen years, moved to a state agency for 23 years and has now returned to academia for all of three months, Larry McKinney has developed a unique perspective about how these two entities can become effective conservation partners. As Oscar Wilde said about the English and Americans – “they are one people separated by a common language”, so too are natural resource agencies and their counterparts in academia. Building a partnership framework must assume that your potential partner really does not know what you do and why you must operate in the way you do. Efforts to do so by all parties is time well spent. Larry has been constantly amazed over the years about how little professors, many of whom have produced any number of future agency staff, actually know about what agencies do and why. That most agency issues are managing people rather than animals; that many deadlines for answer are not flexible; and, that definitive answers are what are needed is often lost on academia. Partnerships between natural resource agencies and academia can be very powerful tools for conservation. Properly developed they build upon respective strengths to defuse issues that often are highly emotionally charged; they can build credibility with decision-makers; and, they can lay the foundation to address developing issues before reasonable options become limited.
A Great Wave Rising- Partnerships in Water Policy Planning:
Presented By: Jim Martin, Conservation Director, Berkley Conservation Institute
Topic description: Jim Martin will discuss the future impact of rapid growth/development and climate change on water supplies in North America. In the next 100 years the arid Southwest and the Southeast will experience severe challenges in water supply which will cause them to shift priorities and look to access water supplies from the northern part of North America. The pressure of these challenges will put water needed by fish and wildlife under the most severe stress. If fish and wildlife managers don’t secure their water supplies with solid policy now, they stand no chance of withstanding the conflict later when the crisis hits. Jim uses examples from across America from the Sacramento, Klamath and Columbia rivers in the west to Texas, Florida and Georgia as examples of the coming conflict. Totally new political partnerships will be required to secure critical water supplies for fish and wildlife in the face of this crisis coming at us like a tsunami.
