Last week, I had the pleasure of going to the 2018 Joint Annual Meeting in Portland where the theme was "Regional Strategies Addressing Global Challenges for Wildlife and Habitat Conservation." The Joint Annual Meeting brought together 4 professional societies: the Oregon Chapter of the Wildlife Society, the Washington Chapter of the Wildlife Society, the Society for Northwestern Vertebrate Biology, and the Northwest Partners in Amphibian and Reptile Conservation. As a joint meeting, there were over 700 people in attendance (!!!), and it was really just a spectacular meeting to learn so many new things and meet new people. For me, this was my first conference in the Pacific Northwest, so it was interesting to learn about all the research that has been done and is currently occurring here. I was also lucky to be selected for the Free Student Lodging Incentive in exchange for volunteering during the meeting. Because of this free lodging, I was able to keep the costs of attending the meeting down.
Dr. Thomas Lovejoy, the "Godfather of Biodiversity," started the meeting off with one of his quotes that is spearheading the National Geographic Year of the Bird campaign that celebrates the centennial of the signing of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
"If you take care of birds, you take care of most of the environmental problems in the world."
Dr. Lovejoy went on to give an inspiring plenary speech on the ways that nature already has the solutions to many of the problems humans face. He gave as an example the enzyme that is used to rapidly multiply segments of DNA in a technique called polymerase chain reaction (PCR). This technique is used for almost everything in molecular biology and helps solves crimes, identifies diseases, and in wildlife biology, helps us estimate populations of endangered species. For this technique to work well, the DNA and the enzymes that replicate the DNA need to go through numerous cycles of heating (up to 203 deg F) and cooling, but previous attempts of this technique were unsuccessful because the enzymes would break down. In 1988, after years of searching, Dr. Kary Mullis and his team of researchers finally came to the realization that the solution was in a bacterium called Thermus aquaticus ("Taq") that was discovered in a hot spring in Yellowstone National Park back in 1969 by Thomas D. Brock. Dr. Mullis published their findings in Science and would later win the Nobel Prize for this application of the bacterium.
For the remainder of the meeting, I parked myself in the ecological responses to forest management session (with a focus on song birds), the forest carnivores sessions, and the mammals session. It was great to see fellow graduate students from Oregon State and faculty research assistants presenting the results of years of hard field work, data collection, and analyses. Near the end of the day, I presented some preliminary results from the work we've been doing at the HJ Andrews. Public speaking has always been one of my weaknesses, and I was definitely a nervous wreck before my talk. As the moderator introduced my talk, people kept coming into the room, which only made my anxiety about public speaking worse. Being a short human, podiums and I have always had a love-hate relationship. Standing behind one typically means that my knocking knees are hidden from view, but it also typically means that I can barely see over the top of it and see the audience. This time was no different. I took my time and moved the mic down to my level, but as I did so, I realized I couldn't see the audience. At all. I tried to move to the left but there was a table in the way. I tried to move to the right, but there was no more room on the stage. And then there was the problem of the mic. Alas, I just presented as a voice behind the podium. Anyway, it was really nice to see how many people were excited about research on western spotted skunks! I can't wait to come back next year.
Here's a glimpse of the HJ Andrews this week. We finally have a few inches of snow at headquarters!
