Section Minutes – 2011

AFS Fish Habitat Section

Annual Meeting for 2011

Seattle, WA

Monday, September 5, 2011: 4:00 PM-5:00 PM;  Room 307 (Washington State Convention Center)

Present:  Section officers:  Joe Margraf, Past President; Kyle Hartman, President; John Sweka, President-Elect; and Amanda Rosenberger, Secretary Treasurer.

1)  Call to order.   Joe Margraf call to order at 3:10

2) Determination of quorum.  Quorum met (20 members present plus 3 officers)

3)  Approval of minutes.   Margaret Murphy Moved to Accept minutes as given.   John Sweka seconds.  President calls for a vote:  Minutes approved as presented

4)  Treasurer’s report.  Dues are the primary income, some small bank charges plus refreshments.  217 members are a conservative measure of membership.   We cannot get a list of members from the parent society.  Looking to add to the listserve.  We have added 2000.00 to our treasury.

5)  Habitat Section President’s report.

Feeling better about how the finances are doing.  The section is making great strides in terms of growth.  Voting member under the old 200 rules.  We are voting members on the governing board.  Proposals in for symposia and we are co-sponsoring symposia.

  • Need a group of people to propose habitat symposium and get momentum together at the meeting.
  • Resource Policies that are habitat related.
  • Theme for the next meeting? Must propose habitat symposia to match the theme for the next meeting
  • Section has also sponsored a contest for a logo.  Artistically very good and we are going to make it more cartoonish and elaborate for the logo.  South Dakota.  So we are adding some indication of marine habitat
  • President report ends with a passing of the torch to the next officers
  • We need to pass the torch to the next group
  • John Sweka introduces himself as the president-elect of the section. Has a freshwater oriented background.  Constructs habitat for the sake of habitat, but also thinking that we need more fish and discovering which habitats are the most limiting factors and understanding habitat in a process-oriented manner.
  • Call for nominations from the floor. Hearing none.  Nominations are closed.  John Sweka sole nomination.  So moved from Margaret murphy seconded by Pat.  Unanimous approval of the President Elect for John Sweka

Committee Reports.

Continuing Education:  Courses that are habitat-oriented are already available at the meeting.  We need to keep this on our plate as something important in the future.  Did not see a need this year to intercede and get involved this year.

Newsletter:  We need a lot of help with this.  Jay Dieterich has volunteered to help but not to lead the effort.  Need someone to have a leading role in this.  Getting something substantive to the members.   Webpage is an excellent avenue for the newsletter.

Nominating Committee:  Need a name

Program, 2011, 2012:  Looking to do a symposium proposal in the year

Section/ Committee liaisons:  –

Tom Bigford for RPC:  Society is on the hook to review each new policy for 32 years, we are way behind on the society’s commitment.  We are reviewing and digging more into existing policy statements to give them some ideas on how we can do it.

Webpage:  Constructed and a good means for getting newsletter through to the membership – an excellent avenue to do so.  Habitat.fisheries.org

New Business:

Scott Bonar project:  Standard Methods for Fisheries Biology Book in the back has appendices with data compilations 4000 data sets from 42 states and provinces.  Needs an online resources for people to put in data  – Will be set up at 6:30PM at the poster session.  Needs input from members of the habitat section to see how we can structure the webpage and the database.

Adjournment.

Quorum maintained throughout meeting prior to adjournment.