I am in Madison, WI for the Conserving the Future: Wildlife Refuges and the Next Generation
conference and the atmosphere is getting more energized by the minute.  One reason for the excitement is the
increasing number of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service employees, Friends of wildlife refuges and partner group representatives on flocking to the conference. There are hugs among long-time acquaintances who haven’t seen one another in a while, the sharing of stories of wildlife conservation efforts, and talk about why the Refuge System vision document is important  for their work.

Conference setup

You can’t help but enjoy the company; everyone is so committed to supporting and strengthening the Refuge System and they arrive here ready to work hard and put in long hours.

I just ran into some people who came from a training session for the facilitated discussions. On Tuesday there will be 10 facilitated discussions that will be repeated 3 times throughout the day. Tuesday’s sessions will focus on what should be in the vision that isn’t in there now or conversely what is in the document that needs to be dropped. Wednesday and Thursday the facilitated discussions will tackle how to implement the vision.  What is important about these discussions is that viewers online can join the discussion through the live chat feature on the AmericasWildlife.org website.

Join us for the live chats, the live streaming of keynote speakers and updates and ongoing discussion on other social networks like Facebook.

Maribeth Oakes, Vision Conference Coordinator, National Wildlife Refuge Association

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