2006 Natural Resource Coordinating Conference
March 13-15, 2006 Faculty Club, UC Berkeley Campus

New Directions in Rangelands, Forests, Watersheds, and Communities

Range, livestock, forest, marine, wildlife, fisheries, environmental policy, youth education, and general natural resource advisors, specialists, natural reserve managers, and faculty members participate in the NRCC.

Travel Requests due February 15, 2006
Registration due March 1, 2006

Overview and Objectives

The University of California's Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources (ANR) Natural Resource Coordinating Conference (NRCC) has met annually for the past thirteen years. The objective of the Coordinating Conference is to bring together the workgroups, special projects, and Agriculture Experiment Station (AES) and Cooperative Extension (CE) academics working in the broad area of natural resources to:

Each year, 40 to 80 members of ANR meet together to accomplish these broad goals. Range, livestock, forest, marine, wildlife, fisheries, environmental policy, youth education, and general natural resource advisors, specialists, natural reserve managers, and faculty members participate in the NRCC.

This year’s conference will be on the Berkeley campus with the hopes that the next two will be on the Davis and Riverside campuses. Hopefully, this will increase campus faculty participation and allow county advisors to explore options for campus affiliation and improve their access to campus resources.

The agenda for this year will focus on new developments in four general areas: rangelands, forests, watersheds, and communities. Panelists on these topics will include relatively new advisors, specialists, and AES Berkeley faculty with the intent of introducing new UC experts to the larger natural resource community and identifying overlap among those working on these systems.
We will also provide a time slot for participants to provide feedback to ANR administrators on suggested future programmatic directions or concerns.

A post-conference field tour on Wednesday, March 15, to hardwood rangelands in the San Francisco Bay Area will highlight management challenges in the urban-wildland interface including livestock grazing, watershed management, endangered species, invasive species and recreation.

There will also be an evening reception and poster session on Tuesday, March 14. This will allow participants to view current projects and programs in a wide range of natural resource areas within ANR. It will also provide a chance to learn about the accomplishments and future plans of the various workgroups and Research and Extension Centers. Everyone is encouraged to present a poster of their activities.

The program also allows for special meetings of the various workgroups and statewide special projects on Monday afternoon, March 13, to be held at the Richmond Forest Products Lab. Please indicate if your group would like an opportunity to participate in this on your registration form or inquire about space directly to Sherry Cooper (see contact info below). This may be a good opportunity for joint workgroup meetings to develop coordinated project proposals.

Funds Available

Funds are available for travel, lodging and associated registration fees for the NRCC on a first come, first served basis. Deadline to request travel funds is February 15, 2006. Individuals requesting funds for NRCC should fill out the enclosed request form and submit it to Sherry Cooper (see contact information below). It is important that you request funds early to ensure that they are available for you. Notification of the status of your request will be made prior to registration deadline.

Registration

Registrants will need to submit their registration fee ($75) with personal check payable to UC Regents. This check will not be cashed and will be returned when you check-in at the conference. Please register by March 1. If you do not show up for the meeting, we will keep the registration fee to cover our costs. You will need to make your own hotel arrangements. A list of local hotels will be posted on the website. We will reimburse travel funds for people sharing a room (no singles reimbursed). If you have questions about registration, please contact Sherry Cooper at 530-224-4902, slcooper@nature.berkeley.edu, fax 530-224-4904.

Use this registration form.

Field Tour

The field tour will be on March 15 leaving at 8:00 am from the Richmond Forest Products Lab parking area and returning at 4:00 pm. The field tour is being organized by Sheila Barry (UC Natural Resource Advisor) and speakers will include UC and other resource professionals working on rangeland management issues in the San Francisco Bay Area. This will be a wonderful opportunity to see some spectacular woodlands and learn about ground breaking approaches to protecting these areas for biodiversity using livestock and other management tools.

Call for Posters

There will be a poster session on the evening of March 14. Each natural resource workgroup and statewide project will be encouraged to provide a poster for this. In addition, we are soliciting posters from the various ANR academics and students who have research, outreach and management activities on natural resource research stations. We encourage you to submit titles for consideration at the NRCC poster session by February 15, 2006.

The following posters will be set up in the Howard Room all day. The poster session will be held from 4:30 to 6:00 p.m. with refreshments served.