About Us
The Wildlife Society is an international non-profit scientific and educational association dedicated to excellence in wildlife stewardship through science and education. Our mission is to enhance the ability of wildlife professionals and wildlife students to conserve diversity, sustain productivity, and ensure responsible use of wildlife resources and their habitats. The Western Section of The Wildlife Society is comprised of over 1000 wildlife managers, biologists, ecologists, and students from the States of California, Nevada, and Hawaii. Our range also includes the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Territories of American Samoa and Guam, and the Freely Associated States of the Federated States of Micronesia, Palau, and Republic of the Marshall Islands. Our members are all devoted to the sustainable conservation of wildlife within our region. There are eight geographic Chapters and seven student Chapters that make up the Western Section.
In order to promote sustainable management of wildlife resources the Western Section hosts numerous workshops for wildlife professionals and students to provide the latest in wildlife techniques and offer specialized training for special status species. Check out all upcoming meetings and workshops on our new events page. In addition the Western Section holds an annual meeting where wildlife professionals, students, and other wildlife enthusiasts share their latest information in the wildlife management field.
How Pokies Licensing Standards in Australia Work, Casinozoid Breaks It Down
Australia has one of the most complex and fragmented gambling regulatory environments in the world, and electronic gaming machines — commonly known as pokies — sit at the heart of that complexity. Unlike many countries that operate under a single national gambling authority, Australia delegates the licensing and regulation of pokies almost entirely to individual states and territories. This means that a venue operating machines in New South Wales is subject to an entirely different set of rules than one in Victoria or Queensland. Understanding how these licensing standards work requires looking at the specific legislative frameworks, the bodies responsible for enforcement, and the practical requirements venues must meet before a single machine can spin a reel.
The Legislative Foundation: A State-by-State Framework
The constitutional basis for this fragmented system lies in Section 51 of the Australian Constitution, which does not grant the federal government explicit power over gambling. As a result, each state and territory has developed its own primary legislation. In New South Wales, the key instrument is the Gaming Machines Act 2001, which governs the licensing, approval, and operation of electronic gaming machines in hotels and registered clubs. Victoria operates under the Gambling Regulation Act 2003, administered by the Victorian Gambling and Casino Control Commission (VGCCC), which was restructured and renamed in 2022 from the Victorian Commission for Gambling and Casino Control (VCGCC) to reflect an expanded mandate. Queensland relies on the Liquor Act 1992 and the Gaming Machine Act 1991, while South Australia uses the Gaming Machines Act 1992.
Each of these pieces of legislation specifies not only who can hold a gaming machine licence but also the conditions under which machines must operate, the technical standards machines themselves must meet, and the ongoing compliance obligations of licensees. In New South Wales, for instance, the Independent Liquor and Gaming Authority (ILGA) is the primary decision-making body for licensing, while Liquor and Gaming NSW handles day-to-day compliance and enforcement. The separation of these functions is deliberate — it creates a check on the exercise of licensing power and helps prevent regulatory capture, a known risk in industries where operators are large, well-resourced, and politically connected.
Machine Approval and Technical Standards
One of the less publicly discussed but technically rigorous aspects of pokies regulation is the process by which individual machine models receive approval before they can be deployed in any licensed venue. This is not a rubber-stamp process. Every machine must be tested against the Australian/New Zealand Gaming Machine National Standard, a document that has undergone several revisions since its original introduction. The current framework requires machines to undergo independent testing by an accredited laboratory — organisations like Gaming Laboratories International (GLI) and BMM Testlabs are among the recognised testing bodies — before a manufacturer can seek approval from a state regulator.
The technical standards cover a wide range of parameters. Return to player (RTP) percentages must fall within prescribed ranges — in New South Wales, machines in clubs must return a minimum of 85% of turnover to players over the long term, while hotel machines face the same floor but different ceiling conditions. Random number generators must be certified as genuinely random, and the software integrity of each machine is verified to ensure it cannot be tampered with after approval. Machines must also comply with harm minimisation requirements that have become increasingly detailed since the 2010 Productivity Commission report on gambling, which recommended a range of structural reforms to reduce problem gambling incidence. That report found that approximately 15% of regular poker machine players experienced significant gambling-related harm, a figure that drove substantial regulatory tightening over the following decade.
For those wanting a detailed breakdown of how these approval processes translate into the machines available to players today, Casinozoid has compiled comparative analysis across jurisdictions — check it out as a reference point when trying to understand how regulatory differences affect the actual gaming experience across different states.
Venue Licensing Requirements and Ongoing Compliance
Holding a gaming machine licence is not a one-time administrative hurdle. Venues face ongoing obligations that touch on staffing, physical layout, responsible gambling measures, and financial reporting. In Victoria, a venue operator licence must be renewed periodically, and the VGCCC has the power to impose conditions, suspend, or cancel a licence based on compliance history. The 2022 reforms that restructured the commission also introduced strengthened powers to respond to systemic compliance failures, including the ability to impose civil penalties without requiring a criminal prosecution.
New South Wales introduced a particularly significant reform in 2023 with the mandatory cashless gaming trial, which began with a small number of venues before a broader rollout. Cashless gaming — where players use a registered card rather than cash — is positioned as both a harm minimisation tool and an anti-money laundering measure. The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) had previously identified Australian pokies venues as a vulnerability in the country’s anti-money laundering framework, and the 2018 AUSTRAC review of the gambling sector reinforced that concern. Venue operators under cashless systems are required to maintain player activity records, flag unusual patterns, and report certain transactions to AUSTRAC under the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006.
Responsible gambling obligations are embedded throughout venue licensing conditions. Staff at licensed venues must complete approved Responsible Conduct of Gambling (RCG) training, which in New South Wales is mandated under the Gaming Machines Regulation 2019. Venues must display approved signage, maintain self-exclusion registers, and in many jurisdictions must offer pre-commitment tools that allow players to set deposit or time limits before they begin playing. The practical implementation of these requirements varies considerably between a large registered club in Western Sydney with a dedicated gaming floor and a small regional hotel with a handful of machines, but the legal obligation applies equally.
Licence Caps, Harm Minimisation Policy, and Recent Reforms
A distinctive feature of the Australian regulatory landscape is the use of hard caps on machine numbers at both the venue and jurisdiction level. New South Wales operates under a statewide cap that has been progressively reduced since the early 2000s, when there were approximately 104,000 approved gaming machine entitlements across the state. By the mid-2020s, that number had fallen to around 86,000 through a combination of natural attrition, buyback schemes, and policy-driven reductions. Each venue has a maximum number of approved entitlements, and these entitlements can be traded between venues under a regulated market — a system unique to New South Wales that effectively creates a secondary market for machine rights, with entitlements trading at prices that have historically ranged from $5,000 to over $20,000 each depending on location and demand.
Queensland has taken a different approach, maintaining strict caps on machine numbers per venue category and prohibiting the operation of pokies in most small venues entirely. The state has also been more aggressive in restricting operating hours, with mandatory shutdown periods designed to interrupt extended gambling sessions. These structural interventions are grounded in research showing that continuous play without natural breaks is associated with higher rates of problem gambling behaviour.
Casinozoid has noted in its regulatory coverage that the divergence between state approaches creates genuine confusion for both operators expanding across state lines and for players who may assume rules are uniform nationally. A club operator licensed in New South Wales cannot simply transfer that compliance framework to a Queensland venue — the licensing application, technical approvals, and ongoing obligations must be navigated separately in each jurisdiction. This fragmentation has been a recurring subject of discussion in national gambling policy forums, though proposals for a unified national framework have consistently stalled due to state sovereignty concerns and the significant revenue that state governments derive from gaming machine taxes. In New South Wales alone, gaming machine tax revenue has historically exceeded $2 billion annually, creating a structural tension between harm minimisation objectives and fiscal dependency.
The licensing standards governing pokies in Australia represent a mature but still-evolving regulatory system, shaped by decades of policy reform, harm minimisation research, and the practical realities of managing a deeply embedded form of gambling. The state-based structure creates complexity, but it also allows for genuine policy experimentation — Victoria’s structural reforms, New South Wales’ cashless gaming trial, and Queensland’s venue restrictions each offer lessons that inform the broader national conversation. For anyone trying to understand how these machines end up on a gaming floor, who is responsible for ensuring they operate fairly, and what protections exist for players, the answer lies in a layered system of legislation, technical standards, and ongoing compliance obligations that is considerably more rigorous than casual observers might assume.
The New Path Forward
by Jeff Alvarez
Although The Wildlife Society was established in 1937, the Western Section was not founded until 1954, making this 70-years of serving members and enhancing the professional quality of biologists in the States of California, Nevada, and Hawaii, along with the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Territories of American Samoa and Guam, and the Freely Associated States of Micronesia, Palau, and the Republic of the Marshall Islands. As you can guess, it is a very large and diverse area—diverse in wildlife, habitats, and people.
The Western Section is a science-based, professional society composed of wildlife managers, administrators, researchers, and students. We strongly support engaging and educating the public to accept science-based recommendations wildlife conservation and management. Our mission has been to enhance the ability of wildlife students and professionals to conserve wildlife diversity, sustain productivity, and ensure responsible use of wildlife resources and their habitats. The Western Section is comprised of over 1,000 wildlife students and professionals, all devoted to the sustainable conservation of wildlife in the western United States and its territories. We continue to grow in membership and influence through eight geographic Chapters and seven student Chapters that make up the Western Section.
We have a broad mission to act as advocates, advisors, managers, and conservationists to assist resource agencies, land managers, and other to conserve native wildlife. Along the way, we have learned that doing so requires supporting the biologists, ecologists, botanists, entomologists, and many others that spend their time in the field doing the hard work of preserving our natural heritage. The Western Section offers and supports Chapters that offer numerous workshops focused on the natural history and management of wildlife species. These workshops can offer specialized techniques, hands on experience, and networking opportunities, to name just a few benefits. The Western Section also offers the annual conference were anyone and everyone is invited to either present their data, field updates, or studies, or to attend to become an informed viewer of these presentations. The information sharing, networking experiences, and options for additional workshops, meet-ups, and other professional enhancements is valuable whether you are a student or 40-year veteran.
As a reminder, The Western Section is a volunteer-run organization, you can easily get involved and play a role in the direction that the Western Section goes, and what it offers to its members. The only prerequisite is a little interest to help and a little passion. Your influence can make a difference.
On a personal note: I write this introduction to the Western Section hoping that you will see the potential that is offered here. Occasionally that potential may require a little help from you. By that I mean that science is an iterative process by which we all learn from those that came before us and those doing the work-of-today. If you are contributing to the work-of-today, share it with those around you through the annual conference or chapter symposia, through publications, and just by getting the word out one person at a time. “Wildlife” is our passion, but the “Society” portion plays a huge role in our success as professionals. In order to do those things that we all thought we might do when we first received our degrees we need to work together, rather than compete.
My plea to you is to share what you learn.
Jeff Alvarez, President-Elect, 2024
Western Section of The Wildlife Society
The Path Forward
by Jeff Davis
The Western Section of The Wildlife Society (TWS) was established in 1954. Our first president was Starker Leopold. I never met Starker, but his monumental book,
The California Quail, helped inspire me to pursue wildlife biology as a life path. I certainly wasn’t the only one influenced by this book. In fact, TWS recognized its influence by bestowing it with the Wildlife Publication Award. This book is where I learned that concentrated phytoestrogen in subterranean clover, a food plant, functions like birth control in the California Quail during dry years. That’s still one of the coolest examples of an ecological process I know of. It also embodies the premise of Starker’s father Aldo Leopold’s land ethic, namely that “the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts.”
Our Past President, Rocky Gutiérrez, was one of Starker’s grad students. Rocky reviewed the manuscript for that book and therefore likely helped influence my trajectory. These facts remind me that as wildlife professionals we too are members of a community of interdependent parts. Understanding those parts and where we’ve come from is important for figuring out where we’re going.
Determining where the Western Section is going as an organization is largely the responsibility of the Executive Board. Fifteen years ago, the Board decided a good direction to go would be to increase member services and operations by enacting a full-time Executive Director. It was a great idea. Many tasks previously performed by volunteer Board members were reassigned to the paid Executive Director. Unfortunately, there was no solid plan or clear objectives to guide the Executive Director, and by February 2004, Section funds were depleted, the Executive Director was laid off, and the Section was near insolvency.
What happened? The lack of a solid roadmap was a significant part of the problem. As Yogi Berra said, “If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else.” And, yes, we ended up someplace else. The Board spent much of the rest of the 2000s re-establishing the Section’s financial security and structural stability.
In part to avoid repeating what happened in 2004, the Section embarked on a process in 2013 to develop a strategic plan to guide the Section’s activities over the next five years. Strategic planning is a systematic process of envisioning a desired future. It involves translating that vision into broadly defined goals and objectives and a sequence of steps to achieve them. The outcome of that process was the Section’s 2014-2019 Strategic Plan.
Over the past five years, we’ve accomplished many objectives in that plan. Those include developing the Constant Contact newsletter you’re reading now and solidifying our financial standing, which is the best it’s ever been. The plan served us well, but now it’s time to update it.
In March 2018, the Board met at Grizzly Ranch in the Suisun Marsh to envision and plan our next five years. The main outcome of that meeting was that we narrowed our focus from the original plan’s five broadly defined goals into two goals. As proposed, the goals in our updated strategic plan will be to:
1. Enhance the careers of wildlife professionals, and
2. Be an active voice for science.
Having just two main goals will give us a clearer sense of purpose and will drive our engagement with the public. The other main goals were not abandoned. Instead, they became partly operationalized and partly subsumed under these two goals.
Over the coming months, Rocky Gutiérrez and I will revise the written plan in accordance with the Board’s direction. When adopted, the revised plan will provide the guidance necessary to continue offering more professional development opportunities and promoting science-based decision making in a manner that is financially responsible and sustainable.
As always, the direction of the Western Section is what you desire. We welcome your suggestions not only relative to these two main themes of the updated strategic plan but also any you might have about the future activities of the Western Section. Please feel free to contact either me or Rocky with your ideas.
Jeff Davis, President (2018)
Western Section of The Wildlife Society