2016 Meeting Recap

Over 400 individuals from across the northwest gathered at our 2016 meeting at the Coeur d’Alene Resort, Idaho -a great success for SNVB and our partners. A special thanks to those partners and especially to The Idaho Chapter of The Wildlife Society for doing all the heavy lifting with the Resort and on the ground logistics, all the volunteers who contributed throughout the proceedings, the excellent workshop leaders, and all of you that presented and attended. We couldn’t do it without you all. We hope everyone had a great time, learned some things, met friends old and new, and were inspired for a new year of work and study. Reminder: you can download a copy of the program from this any many previous meetings from our meeting history page.

Poster and Presentation Awards

This year our judges identified the best oral and poster presentations in both the professional and student categories. To read the abstracts and get contact information so as to congratulate the authors and learn more about their amazing work check out the full program on our past meeting page: http://thesnvb.org/meeting-history/.

The Winners:

BEST PROFESSIONAL PRESENTATION:
Jon Horne: Can a Low Carrying Capacity and a Highly Stochastic Environment Induce a Predator Pit in Elk Populations?

BEST STUDENT PRESENTATION (tie):
Kesia Manlove (co-winner): A Critical Role for Disease Persistence in Population Viability Assessments of Bighorn Sheep.
&
Zoe Tinkle (co-winner): The Plight of Prey: Population Demographics, Foraging Behavior, and Personality of Piute Ground Squirrels (Urocitellus mollis) in Structurally Variable Habitats.

BEST PROFESSIONAL POSTER:
Kathy Cousins: Clark Fork River Delta Restoration Project.

BEST STUDENT POSTER:
Stephanie Berry: The influence of fuel reduction treatments on the nutritional ecology of Mule and White-tailed Deer in northeastern Washington.

2016 SNVB Scholarship

Kelly Klingler, a Ph.D. Student in the Ecology, Evolution and Conservation Biology program at The University of Nevada, Reno, became the 12th recipient of SNVB’s student member scholarship for her project Investigating the movement dynamics, relative stress hormone concentrations, and population genomics of the North American pika (Ochotona princeps) in the Sierra Nevada. You can check out the full list of all of our scholarship winners from the past 11 years here.

Member Recognition

Tara Chestnut, though far from the end of her good work and still very much making thing happen, was recognized with SNVB’s Lifetime Achievement Award for her tireless contributions to SNVB as our past Trustee (2001-2004), Secretary (2005-2006), President (2007 -2010), Scholarship committee chair(2002-present), and workshop leader (frequent). Tara helped get SNVB down on paper and set standards for the SNVB board to follow and left a legacy of products, projects and inspiration for SNVB for years to come.

Tiffany Garcia was honored (or rather SNVB was honored by having her) with our Mentorship Award for the years of support and guidance he has provided to so many students who have had the fortune of crossing paths with her. In what we can only say was an AWESOME tribute to her, students past and present, reached out by video or in person to thank her for all she has done as a mentor, friend, and SNVB board member and advocate.

SNVB power couple Gregg Green and Marcia Repaci were presented with the Society’s President Award. Greg is a past president who helped shepherd SNVB’s transition from the bird and mammal society to our current iteration as the Society for Northwestern Vertebrate Biology! Thanks to his and others’ leadership we know have a bigger and more inclusive group of taxa and members than any time before. Marcia is someone whose work we all know whether we know it or not as she is the artist behind the SNVB logo which graces every fauna, journal, webpage page and correspondence we do! Thank you Gregg and Marcia!

Board Elections

Our confirmation elections resulted in a shift amongst the titles and responsibilities of our board. Jamie Bettaso will be stepping into the Southern Vice President position and David Nagorsen will move into the Northern Vice President Office. Patrick Burke has joined the SNVB board as our new Treasurer. Blake Hossack was re-elected for another term as Trustee. We are currently looking for faces familiar or new for our Oregon Vice-President, Northwestern Naturalist Journal Editor, and Website manager If you are interested or know of a good candidate please let us know! Our entire current board roster and their biographies, including both elected officers and appointed editors, can be viewed at www.thesnvb.org/board-members/.

2017 Meeting

We are excited to announce that we will be meeting in Arcata, California in February or March 2017. This will be out first meeting in California since 2003 and it will be great to be back in the redwoods! We are currently accepting proposals for meeting partners, sessions, workshops, and other brilliant ideas to continue our legacy of informative and fun meetings! Please send an email to teal.waterstrat@gmail.com or on “our contact us” page with your thoughts or suggestions for the meeting.