Trying to decide my level of expectation regarding the approaching conference Conserving The Future: Wildlife Refuges and the Next Generation has flavored my thoughts for more than a month now.  It has not been an untroubled train of thoughts; rather it has been more of a roller-coaster ride of precipitous highs and lows.

This will not be my first participation in efforts to synthesize a comprehensive set of goals to guide the hugely important system of habitats for fish, wildlife and plants into a looming future.  My association with refuges spans over two score and ten years.

I am keenly aware of the hundreds of heartfelt suggestions, ideas, comments and reactions that the pre-conference interactions have generated; I’ve read dozens of them myself and contributed some of my own.  Certainly, the conference planners and leadership deserve our appreciation for their historic efforts to engage interested publics and provide an accessible forum (not without some struggling!) for exchanging ideas and reactions.

That is now all behind us; we have a new “pre-conference version” of the vision document.  The prose improved, but came at the cost of substance.  We will engage the conference agendas with much work to be done.  We will have help from the teams who have been working diligently on the gist of the major topical areas and the identified challenges within those vital programs.  Like all such events, participants can expect to derive benefit and satisfaction in proportion with their own gift of participation.  One should not attend merely to sit quietly in attendance.

Having said all of this, my expectations continue their ride.  I look forward to the synergism created by interaction among knowledgeable people who care deeply  about the Refuge System.  I want this to succeed; America’s wildlife deserves that success. I am ready to contribute.

 

Retiree Bill Reffalt, Blue Goose Alliance