Greg Butcher
Partners in Flight VI, an international conference (http://pifconference.com/) will be in San Jose, Costa Rica, October 30 through November 3, 2017. PIF VI will be held in conjunction with the XXIst Congress of the Mesoamerican Society for Biology and Conservation (SMBC) (www.congresosmbc.org).
One of the major advances in conservation biology over the past two decades or so has been the emergence of well trained and highly talented and dedicated professionals in Latin America and the Caribbean. More than 500 of them (including many students) are expected to attend SMBC XXI and PIF VI.
Partners in Flight is increasingly alerted to the importance of full-annual-life-cycle biology and conservation of migratory birds. To be successful in understanding and conserving these species, we need to greatly increase our partnerships with colleagues south of our border. This meeting is a great way to make that happen. In addition, the timing of the meeting provides the opportunity to see in the field how Nearctic breeding birds interact with Neotropical residents during the nonbreeding season.
The most important reason to attend is that both PIF and SMBC are putting together a great program. The SMBC program greatly broadens the variety of topics that we are used to seeing covered in a North American bird or wildlife meeting.
We will have 11 speakers giving 9 plenaries (http://pifconference.com/program/plenary-speakers/). The conference theme is “Biodiversity Conservation in the Hands of Mesoamerican Women”, so we have a great line-up of female plenary speakers, including Winnie Hallwachs to speak about her decades-long work with Dan Janzen in the Guanacaste Conservation Area, Bridget Stutchbury on migratory connectivity and conservation, and Alice Boyle on manakins. In addition, Alvaro Umana will provide a Costa Rican perspective and Chris Wood will update us on the latest developments with eBird.
We have attracted 23 symposia for this meeting, covering a wide variety of topics including business conservation planning (sometimes referred to as investment strategies), species assessment, migration stopover, long-term research, avian collections, online tools, education, and conservation success stories.
The symposia will summarize work in Mexico, Central America, and the pine-oak portions of both. They will cover a wide variety of taxa, including hummingbirds, shorebirds, and waterbirds (including Reddish Egret).
It’s quite a program! See you in Costa Rica! Any questions? Contact Greg Butcher at gsbutcher@fs.fed.us.