NWX-FWS (US) Moderator: John Taitano 06-19-18/4:00 pm CT Confirmation # 932358 Page 1 NWX-FWS (US) Moderator: John Taitano June 19, 2018 6:49 am CT Coordinator: Thank you for standing by. I'd like to inform all parties that today's conference is being recorded. If you have any objections you may disconnect at this time. For assistance during your conference, please press Star 0. Thank you. You may begin. ((Crosstalk)) Bill Brewster: Okay, good to have everybody here for our second meeting of IWCC. Glad everyone took the time to come in and share their thoughts. We have some presenters that I think can be quite helpful. Our main job is to learn and educate ourselves as much as possible on all aspects of wildlife, wildlife management, sustainable wildlife management. And what I would like to do is first go around the room and let each council member introduce themselves, tell where they're from, and then we'll go from there. Why don't we start with (Keith Martin)? (Keith Martin): (Keith Martin) I'm from Camdenton, and I was (unintelligible). NWX-FWS (US) Moderator: John Taitano 06-19-18/4:00 pm CT Confirmation # 932358 Page 2 Erica Rhoad: I’m Erica Rhoad, National Rifle Association (unintelligible). Man 1: Could we have - make sure that you push that button in front of you? Could we start again with (Keith)? Push that button and when you're done if you'd turn it off so that it doesn't get a lot of feedback. (Keith Martin): I'm (Keith Martin), Kansas City, and I host (unintelligible) River Adventures on the (unintelligible). Erica Rhoad: Erica Rhoad with the National Rifle Association in (unintelligible). (Bob Oz): (Bob Oz), Atlanta, Georgia, Sportsmen International. Peter Horn: Peter Horn, New York CIC. John Jackson: John Jackson with Conservation Voice, New Orleans. Denise Welker: Denise Welker, (Fulshear), Texas. Olivia Opre: Olivia Opre from Whitefish, Montana. Man 1: Turn your button off. Steven Chancellor: Steven Chancellor, Indiana. Greg Sheehan: Greg Sheehan with US Fish and Wildlife Service in Washington, DC. Bill Brewster: Bill Brewster from Oklahoma. Jenifer Chatfield: Good morning, I'm Jenifer Chatfield. I'm from Florida. NWX-FWS (US) Moderator: John Taitano 06-19-18/4:00 pm CT Confirmation # 932358 Page 3 Terry Maple: I'm Terry Maple, I represent Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens and the Association for Zoos and Aquariums. Doug Hobbs: Morning, I'm Doug Hobbs with US Fish and Wildlife Service. Jeff Crane: Jeff Crane, Congressional Sportsman Foundation, Maryland. (Lorena Watson): (Lorena Watson), State Department, Washington, DC. (Kurt Powers): (Kurt Powers), Special Law and Service. Bill Brewster: Good day. Also I thought at this time we'd go ahead and introduce our presenters. There'll be up here presenting later. Dr. Tom Snitch, if you would stand please. Peter Chipman here. Clay Brewer is here somewhere, I believe. Man 2: He's running a little bit late. Bill Brewster: He's running late. Who am I missing? Jenifer Chatfield: (John Lucas). Bill Brewster: (John Lucas), thank you. Luis Santiago: Luis Santiago (unintelligible). Bill Brewster: Okay, thank you. I think everybody's had the opportunity to see the written comments that were submitted prior to this that were sent out by Doug and Doug, we really appreciate your efforts to bring everything together on this. NWX-FWS (US) Moderator: John Taitano 06-19-18/4:00 pm CT Confirmation # 932358 Page 4 It was kind of a short time frame to get everything together and you and your group have gone above and beyond to try to make sure that we have a good meeting and have everything in order and appreciate you getting the stuff out. In the written comments, I thought it was interesting. There's a lot of comments in there that I think most all of us agree with and sometimes the perceptions of our group is not reality. So I would hope that those that made written comments that made particular references in it would come forward and show us over the next few months where they can document where they were talking about. We all are quite concerned about poaching issues, about trafficking, about sustainable wildlife. That is - that's something we all have a very strong belief in. We've all had the opportunity to go all over the world and see the different methods: what works, what doesn't, et cetera. So that's all the opening comments I have, Director Sheehan, your comments. Greg Sheehan: Thank you, Chairman Brewster. Maybe just a couple quick updates of where we're at - at the Fish and Wildlife Service and what things are happening in our world. First of all, I do want to thank all of the speakers who were able to join us today. We have a great set of speakers, but I want to thank our Fish and Wildlife Service employees who'll be presenting, who've organized the meeting, who are hosting the meeting here in our Atlanta office of the Fish and Wildlife Service and looking forward to that. A few - a little bit about our international program: our international program has two divisions in it. And we have between the two, we have roughly 85 employees. And in the - the two divisions are what we call management authorities and they do what we most pe- (sic) - I'm sorry, what's the third one I missed? NWX-FWS (US) Moderator: John Taitano 06-19-18/4:00 pm CT Confirmation # 932358 Page 5 Bill Brewster: (unintelligible) authority and (unintelligible). Greg Sheehan: International conservation, I'm sorry -- three programs. We have in our management authority that does the permitting that you're mostly familiar with and our scientific and international conservation programs essentially cover all of the work we do. We do a lot of grants out of those programs, a lot of grant monitoring. But basically work around the world to identify issues that we can do to help out. And those - that ranges from, you know, the continents of South America, Asia, Africa and even areas in Central and North America where we have some of that interaction of wildlife. Within that, we've had a few changes in the last few months. We've had some retirement that folks move on. Eric Alvarez is our new acting chief of our new international program -- Acting Assistant Director is the technical title, I believe. We've had Craig Hoover, who is over our management program for quite a number of years, and he moved over to the scientific authority but he's working in that arena now. Right now we have somebody in his place, Pam Scruggs, who does a great job for us overseeing that through this transition of changes. We have Tim Van Norman who was in permitting for a number of years also retired. And we have (Mary Cagliano) has stepped into that role in an interim basis. Over the scientific authority Richard Ruggerio is over that program for many years and he too opted to take a retirement not long ago and that's the role that Craig is doing and then we have quite a number of vacancies that we're trying to get filled. So I know that's kind of a mouthful but hopefully you can see that we're going through a lot of changes and I'm excited I think that, you NWX-FWS (US) Moderator: John Taitano 06-19-18/4:00 pm CT Confirmation # 932358 Page 6 know, we'll end up with a great set of folks there to make sure we move forward properly in these programs. We are - will announce it before we meet again here so I thought I'd probably give you sort of a heads up. We're working on a strategic plan. When I came into this role and was able to spend some time with our international program realized that while there's different programs in there that have different roles and responsibilities that we really didn't have a strategic plan of where we were going. And ho- (sic), you know it's a big world we live in with lots of wildlife and how are we trying to best work to develop that conservation and processes that we use to engage in so we've begun. It's pretty intensive, we've got an outside contractor coming in who's helping us with this strategic planning process. That will not only be just an internal look about what we do and how we do it, but it will engage with our other governmental partners such as State Department, USAID, and others who want to make sure that we are addressing everybody in the government ranks, right, as well as foreign governments where we are able to engage in a best way there. Secondly, that will involve bringing our NGO community together that - to get feedback and input on that will spend the full range of NGOs who have many different interests and philosophies of international wildlife so we want to hear from everyone. But the goal of this is to have a plan that will help us move forward as we look at things like how we develop and provide conservation, how we look at our permitting processes around the world, how we look at law enforcement NWX-FWS (US) Moderator: John Taitano 06-19-18/4:00 pm CT Confirmation # 932358 Page 7 capacity and how we best go about addressing that and the wildlife traffic in arenas as Chairman Brewster talked about.