The New England Chapter of the Society for Conservation Biology

Minutes for the meeting on 10 June 2003

Held at Elliston Farm in Weston, Massachusetts.

Vice President Charles Chester led the meeting as President Lisa Delissio was unable to attend.

Approval of last meeting's minutes

Tentative approval was made for the last meeting's minutes. Charlie will conduct an investigation as to the status of those minutes.

Thanks to Steven for all his work

Steven is continuing on with us as a volunteer because he has graduated and is no longer a work-study student. The Board offered its congratulations to Steven, and its thanks for all of his hard work.

Board positions

Student representative: Lisa notified Charlie by email that Sarah was going to take over his job this May, but may not have work-study money until the fall. If nobody has another student in mind, Lisa has offered to find a Salem State student.
Media representative: Lisa offered to inquire of Ross Gelbspan.
Legal representative: Lisa offered to inquire of Lori Erlich.

There is some question over the availability of whether or not we will be able to acquire an email version of the NESCB stationary due to concern over quality control. The Board unanimously voted to have Lisa to enquire further into this matter.
Jose has notified Lisa that a printed version of the stationary will be done within a week and a half.
Lelia will make temporary stationary.

Charlie will back to our donors with thankyou letters and/or phone calls.
Kamal Bawa would like to see an Annual Report from NESCB.
Marsha notified the Board that the social responsible investment department at husband's bank might be willing to provide us some form of support.
Lisa will send the text of annual report to Steven, who will inquire of Jose about producing a temporary 2-sided paper pamphlet.

Steven told the Board that this event was not successful. They sat at a table with NESCB information, but there was little interest, perhaps because the event was too disbursed. It is probably not worth participating in this event again.

Global Climate Change event

Charlie reported on the Global Climate Change event at Tufts in February. He said that due to illness, posters and advertizing was done too late to bring in a sizeable crowd. Nonetheless, the event was well-received by those who attended.

Charlie reported that planning for the fall's Symposium was on target. However, Charlie's "vote-by-elimination" system for chosing the title of the Symposium had one serious flaw; every single title for the Symposium was rejected.
The Board members present decided to come to a resolution on the issue, and after a few minutes of deliberation decided upon the name: "Leaf-peepers and Frost-heaves on the Information Superhighway: New England, Conservation Biology and the Internet"
Charlie asked Lelia about the possibility of web-broadcasting the event. She said that Charlie should inquire of Dave as to whether the facility might have this capacity.

According to Lisa's instructions, Charlie notified the Board that it is time for elections for several members. Unfortunately, we did not have the relevant paperwork at the meeting to determine this issue any further. Charlie will figure this out and bring it up at the next meeting.

Meetings

Due to tonightÕs low turnout, there was some discussion of when Board meetings ought to be held.
The Board decided that Board meetings should be held three times per year, on 15^th day of the months of January, June, and September. All Board members should schedule these dates into their calendars. Of course, the Board can decide to reschedule these dates as it sees fit.
The Board decided that of these three dates, January should be the "open" meeting for the public and membership.
Charlie suggested that a Board member should make a short presentation at the January meetings, and offered to do the first one in 2004.
Marsha to host next meeting at her house in September. Charlie will send out an announcement about the event, including an inquiry as to whether September 15, 2003, would be an amenable meeting date for most Board members.

Lisa will be updating the annual report, and will push for money from the parent society to get it done this summer.
As noted above, Steven will work on an interim standby report.

Lelia and Steven will look into the possibility of setting up a "Conservation Personals" feature on the NESCB website that has similar functionalities to those of the Calendar and Job listing.
It was suggested that "Conservation Personals" was a problematic name. The Board unanimously renamed the initiative: "Conservation Connections."

Concern was raised over NESCB's relationship with Gregory Walsh of Natural New England. Charlie will call Greg to assess the situation (and to ask for more copies of the issue that reprinted a Conservation Perspectives article).

Becky reported that NESCB has $1400 ($900 in the Cambridge Trust account, $486 in the PayPal account).

Steven reported that membership has gone up. There are now a total of 8 student members (from a January level of 5), and 33 professional members (from a January level of 24). Steven made an eloquent and hopefully resonant argument for increasing membership.