Welcome to the new and improved WBBA website and its inaugural blog post! We hope the website adequately represents WBBAs mission to inform scientific discovery and conservation action through ethical bird banding practices. We also hope our new website will serve as a medium for banders to learn about WBBAs annual meetings, grant opportunities, publishing venues and to engage in our dynamic western bird banding community. Since WBBAs last annual meeting in Arcata, in October 2014, WBBA has taken the lead on three initiatives.

First, we hope to broaden our international capacity to better serve the western banding community by coordinating our next annual meeting outside the USA. As such, we scheduled the 2015 annual meeting near Vancouver, British Columbia, hosted by the Vancouver Avian Research Centre. The meeting theme, Banding Across Borders, signifies the power of partnerships across cultures and countries to leverage our collective expertise to affect bird science, conservation and land management. In addition to participants from Canada and the USA, we hope to see as many people as possible from our partner countries in Latin America. In addition to great talks from WBBA members, and a keynote address from John Reynolds of Simon Fraser University, we are pleased to announce a Special Session within the scientific program: The Use of Bird Monitoring Data in Making Sound Land Use and Management Decisions. Follow this link for details and registration.

Second, we are connecting with more banders through social media (check out our new Facebook page). Additionally, we have increased communication with our sister organizations, Inland and Eastern Bird Banding Associations, by coordinating a conference call in April with the Presidents and Editors from each of the Associations. The first meeting was fruitful as we discussed various ways to improve our capacity and membership to better serve our respective bird banding communities.

Third, WBBA leadership is seriously investigating ways to improve the usefulness and impact of our joint publication with the other Associations, the North American Bird Bander. Ultimately, we want to elevate the number and quality of submissions which will, we believe, increase WBBAs membership and thus the circulation of the journal. We look forward to sharing our recommendations with the banding community as we continue to discuss ways to improve our journal.

Thanks for supporting WBBA and I look forward to meeting with everyone in British Columbia.

Cheers,

Jared Wolfe, PhD