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EDITOR'S SUMMARY Bringing comic relief to the 2015 ASIS&T Annual Meeting, SIG CON opened with discovery that the alleged nephew of the group's figurehead, Dr. Llewellyn C. Puppybreath III, and speaker at the 2014 meeting was an imposter of dubious character. With the purloined ceremonial wand accounted for, the 2015 symposium opened with a presentation on the I-Index, an anti-establishment altmetric, eschewing group recognition in favor of individualism and self-citation. A paper on the correlation among computer science doctorates, rising arcade revenues and climate warming in Australia highlighted the income and career opportunities available to techies relocating to Oz. Analysis of ASIS&T members' social media posts revealed a skewed distribution of posters, topics and irrelevant content, especially by Association leadership. The session also featured a Monty Python character reporting on fatal answers at the Bridge of Death, multiple personalities of Dr. N. E. Doofus and a séance with illustrious ASIS&T members spanning the spectrum from living to dead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Directional climate change and climate variability are making it harder for producers to graze cattle on rangeland and make a living. New research in Agrosystems, Geosciences & Environment highlights ways producers can tweak their operations to keep cattle on America's valuable rangeland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT: Over the past decade, declines of Canadian populations of boreal caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou) have received considerable attention from scientists, government agencies, environmental nongovernmental organizations, Indigenous communities, and the forest industry. Boreal caribou (also known as boreal woodland caribou) was listed as a threatened species in Canada when the Species at Risk Act came into force in June 2003. Many boreal caribou populations have been shown to be decreasing, in some cases precipitously, and empirical evidence from adult survival and calf recruitment surveys indicates that the cumulative effect of habitat disturbance, including that which results from industrial development, is a key driver in the decline. Yet, as scientific understanding of the decline has become clearer, and agreement among scientists and governments about habitat management requirements has increased, campaigns of denial have intensified in the public sphere. In this paper, we examine parallels with climate change rhetoric prolific in the 2000s and show that willful ignorance disguised as skepticism has resulted in public uncertainty despite robust scientific evidence. We show how these strategies of manufactured uncertainty used in climate change denial campaigns have seeped into wildlife management debates, with pernicious results. In this case, it has successfully delayed efforts to effectively address the decline of boreal caribou, which is protected under federal, provincial, and territorial legislation, and inhibited meaningful dialogue about socially acceptable conservation solutions. © 2018 The Wildlife Society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT The plenary theme at the 2008 annual conference of The Wildlife Society was, 'Thriving within limits: toward a scenario of hope.' Wildlife professionals are still grappling with how wildlife management relates to sustainability as global limits, especially energy, become more obvious in affecting resource management. 'Sustainability' as used in this paper is derived from the commonly cited, Brundtland Report definition of sustainable development as, '...development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.' Further, it is activity that simultaneously addresses the interlinked aspects of economy, environment, and social well-being. To be effective in the future, natural resources agencies and organizations (NGOs) will be compelled to 1) reduce energy use by increasing efficiency of unavoidable uses and reducing optional energy uses; 2) anticipate how energy costs will affect resource use by various stakeholders; and 3) mitigate climate change by reducing combustion processes and thereby greenhouse gases. Because of their fundamental missions, natural resource entities have a special obligation to employ exemplary conservation practices. Challenges are great, but opportunities are significant. Higher fuel costs will constrain some management practices, but may limit further development of more rural and underdeveloped lands, thereby reducing habitat fragmentation and often wildlife damage complaints. Will energy costs promote smaller vehicles, reduction of some management practices, greater focus on recreational areas closer to population centers, consolidation of offices with other entities, and more video-conferencing of meetings? Will wildlife management be effectively integrated into landscapes where energy crops are produced along with food and where 'life-cycle analysis' measures the full ecological footprint of land management? Agencies and NGOs can partner with stakeholders to design landscape use that is more sustainable (less pollution, conserving of energy and soil, more biologically diverse), provides better connections to nature, and enhances overall resource conservation. Educational institutions have a critical role because they are instrumental in preparing future resource managers. © 2014 The Wildlife Society. © 2014 The Wildlife Society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Has the AAA Style Guide Gone Out of Style?' by Elyse Bailey and Oona Schmid; 'Collaborations' by Ed Liebow; 'Annual Meeting Attendees Point to Opportunities for Improvement' by Andrew Russell; 'Science and Government' by Monica Heller; 'Changing the Terms of Debate in Climate Change' by Shirley J Fiske, Susan A Crate, Carole E Crumley, Kathleen Galvin, Heather Lazrus, Lisa Lucero, George Luber, Anthony Oliver-Smith, Ben Orlove, Sarah Strauss, and Rick Wilk; and 'Update on AAA Task Force on Engagement with Israel/Palestine' by Monica Heller, Alisse Waterston, Ramona L Pérez, and Ed Liebow [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on several grants including the FY2014 Our Town Program is launched by the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts to support projects that contribute in the livability of communities and help transform them into lively, beautiful and sustainable places. The grant Principal Investigators from the Federally Funded Research and Development Centers aims at evaluating climate and climate impact. The Science to Achieve Results Program aims to find toxic effects of chemicals.

Natural resource managers are tasked with assessing the impacts of climate change on conservation targets and developing adaptation strategies to meet agency goals. The complex, transboundary nature of climate change demands the collaboration of scientists, managers, and stakeholders in this effort. To share, integrate, and apply knowledge from these diverse perspectives, we must engage in social learning. In 2009, we initiated a process to engage university researchers and agency scientists and managers in collaborative learning to assess the impacts of climate change on terrestrial fauna in the state of Wisconsin, USA. We constructed conceptual Bayesian networks to depict the influence of climate change, key biotic and abiotic factors, and existing stressors on the distribution and abundance of 3 species: greater prairie-chicken ( Tympanuchus cupido), wood frog ( Lithobates sylvaticus), and Karner blue butterfly ( Plebejus melissa samuelis). For each species, we completed a 2-stage expert review that elicited dialogue on information gaps, management opportunities, and research priorities. From our experience, collaborative network modeling proved to be a powerful tool to develop a common vision of the potential impacts of climate change on conservation targets. © 2011 The Wildlife Society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]