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SCB NEWS: HILO DRAWS A CROWD, EXECUTIVE OFFICE ESTABLISHED

We were pretty darned stupid to think that few SCB members would be willing to travel all the way to Hawaii to attend a scientific meeting in the middle of the summer. To our surprise, the turnout at our annual meeting in Hilo in August was near record-level. The organizers had set a limit of 900 participants, because that supposedly was all the campus could accommodate, but ended up accepting nearly 1200 and turning away another few hundred. Although the meeting was crowded, it was not uncomfortably so. Those who attended agreed this was one of our finest meetings. The technical sessions were excellent and so was the entertainment and facilities. I particularly enjoyed the mai tais and a fantastic field trip to the Alaka'i Swamp on Kaua'i, which holds the greatest concentration of globally imperiled endemic species in the United States. Many thanks to co-chairs David Duffy and Bethany Woodworth for pulling off a wonderful meeting.

The minutes of the business meeting will be posted later on our web page, as usual, so I will not review much of that business here. I am happy to report, however, that our executive office venture is coming to fruition. We have an agreement with The Nature Conservancy for office space in their headquarters in Arlington, Virginia (a suburb of Washington, D.C.). We had a topflight round of candidates apply for our executive director position. The search committee had a tough time making a decision. Nevertheless, as this newsletter goes to press, we have extended an offer to one of those candidates. It is highly likely that by the time you receive the next issue of this newsletter, the office will have opened for business.

With the new executive office and staff, SCB will be able to accomplish much more in terms of providing information and advice to policy-makers and conservation groups, aligning with other scientific societies to combat biological illiteracy and lobby for more funding for conservation research and action, and, last but not least, carry out SCB business more efficiently and effectively. One of the first tasks of the new executive director will be to hire an administrative assistant and an intern to assist with these tasks. As Mac Hunter and I explain in an upcoming editorial (Conservation Biology, October 2001), with this new office we are moving from a loose assemblage of like-minded individuals to a true society.

This new office and staff do not come for free. As discussed in the previous issue of this newsletter, to finance the new operations of SCB and catch up with inflation, we are raising the annual dues, such that regular members will pay $19 more in 2002. There will be no price increase for students or individuals from developing countries. Moreover, the Board decided in Hilo that all members who subscribe to Conservation Biology will receive an on-line subscription to the journal for no additional charge. We remain the best bargain in scientific publication.

In addition to the scheduled series of awards given to individuals and groups, about which you read in the May 2001 newsletter, at our awards banquet in Hilo we presented a special award to Erica Fleishman in recognition of her volunteer service as editor of this newsletter since the publication began in 1994.

At the close of our business meeting in Hilo, I passed the gavel to Mac Hunter, your new president. I am absolutely confident that Mac will be one of our most effective presidents ever. I have enjoyed serving as president of SCB for the past two years. You haven't heard the last of me, as I will continue on the board for four years as past president, then serve two years more on the nominations committee (i.e., SCB asks a lot of its presidents). By the time I'm finished, I will have served SCB for 15 years--and, who knows, I may come back when I'm old and crotchety. I hope to see you all at our 2002 annual meeting.

Reed Noss, reed_noss@conservationscience.com

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