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JOIN — RENEW — DONATE
- Vote for TWS-WS President-Elect Link to Candidate Statement and e-Ballot
- IN-PERSON & VIRTUAL 2022 Annual Meeting of the Western Section of The Wildlife Society
- Save the date! February 7-11, 2022. Peppermill Resort, Reno, NV.
- Link to Meeting Website & Registration
- Pre-Register by January 21st (Online registration will be open during the meeting as space allows)
Upcoming Virtual Workshops:
- Career Builder Workshop Series, These events are MONTHLY and they are FREE! From the first job to the last, professional development never stops. This series is Workshops and so much more meant to help our students find that first job, our early career professionals find that dream job, and our late career professionals find a venue to share their decades of knowledge! This series features a variety of presentations, workshops, and panels where folks who want help building their career can connect with people who have advice and opportunities to offer. But we also know that the connections that our Western Section members make are some of the most valuable benefits they get from being associated with our organization, so in addition to the more structured presentations, workshops, and panels that we offer as part of this series, we are also hosting more casual networking events we call fireside chats. Though these may have a theme, they are meant to be a discussion among peers as opposed to a group of presenters and a group of receivers. Link to Career Builder Workshops Website & Schedule
- Advanced Bat Acoustics: A Master Class, January 21-23, 2022.This online Expert Series workshop will guide participants in improving their acoustic bat data vetting skills with a focus on the SonoBat platform. We will concentrate on methods to differentiate call and sequence characteristics that support confident species identification, and those that indicate when not to assign a species identification. The format consists of lectures and hands-on data workshopping via Zoom. Instructor: Dr. Joe Szewczak
- The Mohave Ground Squirrel Workshop, March 7-9, 2022, Ridgecrest. This workshop is designed to cover the natural history, regulation, and survey techniques of the Mohave ground squirrel (MGS), a California state threatened species endemic to the Mojave desert. The format consists of an online lecture and 4 hours of trapping. You will select one of four trapping time slots when you register. Instructor Team Includes: Kathy Simon (lead), Dr. Phil Leitner, Dr. Scott Osborn, Ed LaRue, Barbara Leitner
- California Botany for Wildlifers, March 25-28, 2022, Fort Ord Natural Reserve, Monterey County. Through lecture and field outings, our goal is to equip the wildlife biologist with a more comprehensive understanding of their own field by exploring the basics of plant science and building an appreciation for how botany can enrich wildlife surveys. Instructor Team Includes: Dr. David Keil, Dr. Tara Schoenwetter, LynneDee Althouse, Randi McCormick, Amy Patten
- Tricolored Blackbird Workshop, May 7-8, 2022. Sacramento. Tricolored blackbirds (Agelaius tricolor) once darkened California evenings in murmurations by the tens of thousands. Now, North America’s most colonial bird (since the passenger pigeon) has become a poster-child for catastrophic decline. In this workshop, we’ll spend one day in lecture and one day visiting a colony in the field in Sacramento. Instructors: Dan Airola, Ted Beedy, Emilie Graves.
Watch our video!
Meet the Western Section Board – Be Part of Something Wilder!
Link to video on YouTube
DIVERSITY COMMITTEE FILM: Link to Diversify Wildlife Film
We started this project because as a group we felt that, while the wildlife field has become increasingly diverse over the past few years, we still have a lot of work to do before we are truly diverse and inclusive. Our goal for this film is to show varying perspectives that people have on the wildlife field and the role that diversity plays within it. At the same time, we want to inspire youth to get involved in the wildlife sciences. We want aspiring scientists to be able to watch this film, see themselves potentially doing fieldwork, and be interested in environmental and wildlife issues. For this reason, we thought it would be a great idea to show what people are working on and the interesting wildlife species that they are working with. Our film showcases undergraduate students, graduate students, and professional biologists who represent different ages, genders, ethnicities, and life experiences. They also come from different backgrounds and have varied interests in the wildlife field, such as hunting, citizen science, field research, and public outreach or education. But they are all wildlife biologists, and are all passionate about helping the environment and diversifying the wildlife community.