Western Hemisphere Shorebird Group Meeting

The Third Western Hemisphere Shorebird Group meeting will be held at Hotel Playa Mazatlan in Sinaloa, Mexico in early March 2009. The purpose of the meeting is to provide a venue for people interested in the various shorebird initiatives to gather, including the Program for Regional and International Shorebird Monitoring (PRISM), the Shorebird Research Group of the Americas (SRGA), the Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network (WHSRN), outreach and education efforts, and other federal, state, and non-governmental organizations. We encourage participants from each group to organize their participants, in an effort to promote, share, and integrate shorebird activities throughout the Western Hemisphere. We anticipate a five-day meeting, with one day reserved for field trips, and a pre-meeting 2-day workshop led by Dr. Brett Sandercock entitled "Estimation of demographic parameters for shorebird populations" and "Estimación de parámetros demográficos de las poblacionesde playeras", which will be given in Spanish and English. The meeting itself will have four invited plenary speakers, species and issue-specific symposia, and general paper and poster sessions. We anticipate that the U.S., Canadian, and Mexico Shorebird Conservation Plan committees will also meet. We are working on providing inexpensive housing for students and providing travel awards to a limited number of people. Mazatlan has the International Airport General Rafael Buelna, so is readily accessible from North, Central, and South America (connecting via Mexico City International Airport). Details of the meeting, including logistics, call for symposia and abstracts, overall program, and international travel will be posted on the US Shorebird Conservation Plan website in the coming year. Please mark your calendars now and plan on attending. Overall coordinator for the meeting is Rick Lanctot (telephone 907-786-3609), and Guillermo Fernandez (telephone +52-669-985-2845) and Xico Vega are coordinating the local logistics.