Towards a successful ECCB 2012 - 2nd day of the Board Meeting

In Saturday Owen Nevin, Chair of the Local Organizing Committee joined the Board via Skype to discuss the latest news and progress in organizing the ECCB2012. The schedule of the scientific program has been finalized. Involvement of students is a high priority aim of the congress, and Piero Visconti, the representative of the Student Affairs Committee has reported on the advancements in launching the student award, the social event organized for students and the possible 'Meet the professors' session. Finances and sponsors were also discussed in details. In addition, the Board members reviewed the abstracts submitted to the Congress. After the hard day an evening walk in the Castle Hill in Budapest and a nice dinner on a boat closed the Saturday program. On Sunday, the BoD continued with the Section's strategic issues.
Besides the SCB-ES meeting the Botanical Garden also gave place to a bigger gathering - numerous chatty woodpeckers, great tits and all other species.

Committees' reports and home-made Tokaj wine - first day of the BoD Meeting

  On Friday, the Board started its semi-annual meeting in the beautiful botanic garden of Vácrátót, Hungary.  Friday afternoon was dedicated to the reports of the committees of the previous months (followed by tasting some nice Hungarian wines and spirits).
The Education Committee is involved in organizing the summer schools (GSS and iSCB) and Rob Marrs, chair of the committee joined "a task force to develop a course/training in conservation leadership to provide a non-US perspective. This was an initiative set up by the President (Paul Beier) and was done very quickly and was submitted to the SCB Global Board of Governors at the New Zealand conference. It was well received and there are moves afoot to progress this.".
The Policy Commitee including Pierre Ibisch as chair and with 10 members  held a meeting in November 11-13 2011, in Ghent. The committee is now getting deep into the issue of analysing renewable energy resources from an ecological perspective. Roadless areas initiative is also in the focus in addition to examining the Sumava National Park case. The Committee participated in a pre-sessional meeting of the Wild Europe Partnership followed by a ‘roundtable’ in the European Parliament.
The Student Affair Committee chaired by Nuno Curado with 8 more members was represented by Piero Visconti, Board member. SCB Students’ Wiki page had a major review, both in content and format, in order to be more reader and student friendly. A stronger branding of the Student wikipage is in progress, to better  identify it as being SCB and well as a tool to and from students. A Twitter account has been created (@SCBStudentWiki) as well as an e-mail for sending ideas and suggestion regarding the wiki page(scbstudentwiki@gmail.com). The new student mailing list is now up and running. The Committee also actively organize ECCB2012 student activities.
Membership and Chapter Committee led by Raphael Arlettaz made a good progress in chapter establishment - one in Hungary and one in Switzerland has been formed in the previous two months. The National Contact Network was also updated with the need for more input from specific countries.
The Communication Committee faces a challenging and interesting time as the new chair has to be appointed with a new strategic plan. As the ECCB2012 is approaching, the committee will have a substantial role in promoting the Section in the conference and provide an interface where conservation issues can be highlighted for the greater public.
If you have any question regarding how you can contribute, please write: europe@conbio.org

Board Meeting In Hungary 16-18 March

The Section Board will meet this week for its regular semi-annual discussion in Vácrátót, Hungary from 16-18 March. The upcoming 3rd ECCB will be a focal issue during the meeting in addition to the strategic discussions on the committees' aims, plans. We will keep you informed!

SCB Student ListServ launched!

The Society for Conservation Biology (SCB) has created a Student Listserv, a discussion group for students (under graduate, graduate and post-doc) interested in conservation biology!

Joining the Student Listserv is easy! Simply click here:

http://groups.google.com/a/conbio.org/group/SCB-Students/topics

to join and stay abreast of fantastic educational and career-boosting opportunities relevant to you! Please note: this is a Google group. If you have an account with Google, you will need to sign in to continue on to join this group, if not, you will need to create one. The process is simple, and emails from the listserv can be sent to any email address, not just gmail addresses.

See more:
http://www.conbio.org/new/2012-02-StudentOpportunities.html

Next IPBES meeting coming up soon

The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform for biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) is on the move. During the upcoming meeting in Panama April 16-21 the fundamental structure and modalities will most likely be established, paving the way for real work. IPBES is to be the parallel to the climate change panel (IPCC) and will hopefully provide policy with a better decision support. SCB is taking part in the establishment of IPBES and will be represented by 4 persons during the upcoming meeting. All interested in conservation science and wishing to be updated on IPBES should visit their home page (http://www.ipbes.net/) for details in the process. In case you have comments and reflections on how SCB should act during the next meeting, please feel free to contact me at bengt-gunnar.jonsson@miun.se.