The 88th North American Wildlife & Natural Resources Conference was held Sunday, March 19 through Friday, March 24, at the Marriott Grand Hotel in St. Louis, Missouri.
For more than 80 years, WMI has administered the North American Wildlife and Natural Resource Conference. The North American Conference sessions, workshops and more than 150 separate meetings and functions, serve as the annual forum to set conservation policy in North America.
Conference attendees include the administrators of federal, state and provincial wildlife and other natural resource agencies, college and university program leaders, heads of leading private conservation organizations, and other managers, scientists, researchers, officials and students of natural resources. The conference is a regular gathering of professionals to learn and exchange ideas, through a formal program, related meetings and other scheduled business, social and educational events.
The conference format is designed so that attendees leave with
- A better understanding of the origins, complexities and likely solutions to current conservation issues, and
- A better sense of the need for and the methods to achieve coordinated, cooperative management of the continent's wildlife.
The "North American" is outlined annually by a Conference Program Committee, chaired by WMI. As many as 20 different agencies and private organizations have participated in helping set the agenda of the North American. In addition, agencies and organizations schedule more than 150 meetings and functions to overlap and occur in conjunction with each conference.