By JACQUI FRAIR and TOM SKLEBAR
Anchorage, AK ¾ Welcome to the newest issue of Remotely Wild! We felt it was important to explain a little of the history of our working group. The GIS and Remote Sensing Working Group originated out of the North Dakota Chapter of the Wildlife Society dating back to January 1993. Our founding father, Tom Sklebar of the Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center, attained interim status for the working group from TWS Council in March 1993. The first official working group meeting took place at the Midwest Fish and Wildlife Conference in December 1993.
At the 1st Annual TWS National Meeting (Albuquerque, NM in 1994), the working group sponsored a symposium attended by over 200 people. Full status as an official working group was granted by Council at that meeting making this working group one of the Society’s oldest (second only to the policy group). Tom passed the chairman’s torch to Tony Curtis of ESRI at TWS ’95 in Portland.
Under Tony’s leadership the working group held an all-day paper symposium, "GIS in Wildlife Science: Current and Future Directions" chaired by Dick Lawrence at TWS ’96 in Cincinnati and Telemetry was added to our title and declared a range of expertise. Jane Austin of the Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center has served as chair of the Telemetry Committee since its inception. The GIS/Remote Sensing and Telemetry Working Group sponsored a telemetry forum, spearheaded by Jane, at TWS ’97 in Snowmass which had over 300 attendees! the poster session: "Integrating GIS, Remote Sensing, and Radiotelemetry technologies in Wildlife Research and Management" again organized by Dick. Tony passed the torch to Dave Morton from the U.S. Geological Survey this year.
Dave has been president now for about one month and under his leadership we have already achieved a working group website (which you’ll read more about on page 5) and submitted a symposium proposal for TWS ’99 (see page 6). We are 219 strong this year with lots of opportunities for expertise networking, working group growth, and membership involvement. This newsletter will give you an idea of what’s on tap … join in the fun!