Rendezvous at Reno: Western Wildlife Conference
I had an amazing experience at the Western Section of the Wildlife Society 2017 conference. It was very much a social event amongst wildlife professionals, along with board meetings, lectures, and discussion of novel research. It was a long ride to Reno carpooling with Aaron, my fellow officer at the Wildlife Society's UCSB student chapter; we were delayed by a snowstorm and some car misfortunes that thankfully left no one hurt.
We parted ways at the hotel, and I was thrown into rooming with a stranger that I had coordinated a hotel stay with through email. This was my first taste of the opportunities for networking that was the conference’s main draw to me. Aaron, a fourth year, was on the lookout for job opportunities, but I was just there to get to know people and see what life as a wildlife professional was like.
My roommate, and many other people I met casually throughout the conference, were interesting people that I probably didn’t forge a lasting connection with. We had meaningful conversations by virtue of having the same interest and passion for wildlife and the environment, but contact information was only exchanged incidentally, or if we had extremely similar interests and could help each other professionally. However, I did learn useful things in these conversations, such as different classes or programs that would be useful.
For the job seekers, personal business cards listing contact information and specific wildlife interests seemed to be useful, and I’ll be doing that if I go next year to Santa Rosa for my final year at UCSB. I did bring copies of my resume, even though I’ll still be in school for another year, but I only gave out one – to the U.S. Forest Service, and with their hiring freeze it’s unlikely that I’ll hear back from them for a while. I mostly did it to be on their email list, though.
I spent most of the time I wasn’t in some kind of lecture by catching up with old friends, who were previous UCSB Wildlife Society officers that had graduated and moved away. The most valuable connections I made were being introduced to members of our parent chapter, the California Central Coast. (In the Wildlife Society, UCSB is part of the Central Coast Chapter, which is in turn part of the Western Section that encompasses California and Nevada.) These members were wildlife professionals from throughout Central Coast, and many of them help to host local workshops and events that students and early professionals could attend to gain skills.
As for the lectures themselves, I’d known a bit about the topics from classes or articles. However, I learned a lot more than I would have in class by hearing the information from those closely involved.
The keynote talk by the Nevada Nature Conservancy president gave me a newfound appreciation for the restoration and outreach work that private agencies can do. The plenary session on invasive species was in an interesting conversation format, and I recognized one of the speakers, Daniel Simberloff, when he was mentioned in one of my classes a week later.
The concurrent sessions and the poster session were engaging, with questions about the research sparking interesting discussions. I actually talked to two Santa Barbara locals I knew that I did not expect to see: one was presenting her citizen science data at a concurrent session, and the other had been my teaching assistant in a past class who was presenting her preliminary graduate research results in the poster session.
It was these kinds of connections that made the conference so interesting and showed me the value of being in the Wildlife Society. I’m excited to go next year as a soon-to-be graduate and early professional to reaffirm the connections I made and make new ones.
This blog post was originally posted to The Wildlife Society at UCSB's website at ucsbwildlifesociety.wordpress.com. Elaine Tan is the previous Secretary of the WIldlife Society at UCSB during the 2016-2017 school year. The Wildlife Society at UCSB is a student chapter of a national organization, The Wildlife Society, that promotes wildlife stewardship and conservation through scientific engagement.
