ESRI Conservation Program Partners:

Society for Conservation GIS

Status Report 9-15-97

There has been an enormous amount of activity among the 14 interim board members in terms of filing for 501c3 incorporation, discussing the Society's structure, purpose, and electing interim officers. An official web site is in the works, a treasurer and a social justice/green oriented bank has been chosen and some of the first memberships and endowments to support the work of the Society have started to come in. The following is a list of the interim board members and the areas of Society interest that they are developing. We hope to have the Society formalized enough by next summer to have formal elections for the board and officers at the annual conference. In the meantime, memberships are being accepted by the membership coordinator (Sandra), and you are invited to contact any of the interim board members if you have questions or thoughts to offer on their area of interest and work (shown in parentheses).

-Gillian Bowser - gillian_bowser@nps.gov (public access to data, diversity)
-Will Allen - allentcf@aol.com (training and professional standards)
-Michael Hamilton - michael.hamilton@ucr.edu (annual conference)
-Sandra Coveny - sandrac@peak.org (fundraising and membership)
-Leslie Backus - chelton@strato.net (peer review)
-Easy - easy@desktop.org (web site)
-Roberta Pickert - gislab@ct.net (support for developing country members)
-Kai Snyder - snyderk@ccmail.orst.edu (communication / collaboration)
-Charles Convis - cconvis@esri.com (diversity, society procedures)
-Steve Beckwitt - sbi@oro.netm (general)
-Peter Morrison - peterm@methow.com (general)
-Tim Bechtold - bechtold@wildrockies.org (society incorporation)
-Cheryl Crupi - clcrupi@aol.com (training and professional standards)
-John Mangiameli - jmangi@ag.arizona.edu (incorporation)

Additional news on the Society will be published on the CONSGIS listserver (you can subscribe to for free by sending the line: SUBSCRIBE CONSGIS yourfirstname yourlastname, To the following email address: LISTSERV@URIACC.URI.EDU)

The 7th annual gathering of Conservation GIS folks at the James Reserve, July 5-7 1997, was an historic success. For the first time, it was organized as a professional conference, with almost 20 papers on many topics in conservation and GIS. One of the most popular was Macon Coles' (Earthlaw) and Peter Morrison’s report on their use of GIS to protect ancient redwood forest for Marbled Murrelet survival. This was the first time a GIS was used live, in court, at the federal supreme court level, and the result was a victory for conservation. Macon was full of powerful ideas on the effective use of maps and technology in courtroom settings, and his presentation marked the beginning of what we hope will be a fruitful alliance between our community of mappers and scientists and his community of environmental lawyers and activists. You can see the schedule of other papers here, or Click Here for Draft Conference Proceedings.

At the plenary meeting of our group, the "Conservation GIS Alliance", it was decided to adopt a more formal structure and become a non-profit organization tentatively called "The Society for Conservation GIS". We hope to create this as a professional society like the Society for Conservation Biology, with membership open to individuals rather than organizations, and activities that promote our own mission of furthering nature conservation goals through the appropriate use of mapping technology. We discussed the idea of a basic creed: "Do No Harm", meaning that members do not allow harm to come to natural environments thru their skills or technology, and that when we are together as a society, we do not allow harm to come to one another through our words or deeds. Defending each other as colleagues is an important tool to combat the gossip and divisiveness that sometimes affects activist organizations. It also challenged us to ensure that this society remains open to people interested in conservation GIS no matter where they come from, including organizations and industries that act in opposition to conservation goals. We want to hold out the promise that as individuals we may be able to rise above the problems and limitations of our institutions and build a shared vision for an environmentally sustainable future. We want to foster the development of relationships and alliances that help us achieve that shared vision no matter where we find ourselves working or acting.

An ad-hoc board of directors was assigned based mainly on whoever had been active in the alliance before and who was willing to volunteer for the different tasks. The tasks laid out for work over the next few months were:

- Draft incorporation papers and bylaws
- Organize 1998 conference
- Investigate fundraising and funding partnerships
- Develop internal communications for members and the board
- Develop support and subsidy programs for international colleagues
- Develop web site
- Develop program for peer review of conservation GIS research
- Develop Society standards for conservation GIS research and products
- Develop Data Access lobbying program to improve availability of GIS data

Text, Compilation & web design: Charles Convis, ESRI Conservation Program, July 22, 1997