MEETING MINUTES

Mid-Atlantic Exotic Pest Plant Council
Organizational Committee Meeting No. 2
Thursday, May 13, 1999
10:00 - 4:00

Meeting was held at The Nature Conservancy Headquarters Office, 4245 N. Fairfax Drive, Suite 100, Arlington VA.

In attendance were:

1.       Jil Swearingen (NPS, National Capitol Region) facilitated
2.       Donnelle Keech, The Nature Conservancy (Maryland/DC Chapter) took minutes
3.       John Beckman, West Virginia DNR
4.       Nancy Benton, The Nature Conservancy (Home Office)
5.       Sarah Bishop, Partners in Parks
6.       Faith Campbell, American Land Alliance
7.       Mary Handley, College of Intergrated Science & Technology, James Madison University
8.       Lane Heimer, Maryland Dept. of Agriculture
9.       Carol Jelich, Maryland Native Plant Society
10.    Wayne Millington, NPS (Northeast Region)
11.    Larry Morse, The Nature Conservancy (Home Office)
12.    Dale Nisbet, NPS (Harpers Ferrry)
13.    Louisa Thompson, Irvine Natural Science Center, Maryland Native Plant Society
14.    Wayne Tyndall, Maryland DNR
15.    Lisa Wainger, Center for Environmental Science, University of MD
16.    John Randall, The Nature Conservancy (Wildland Weeds Research and Management)
         stopped by very briefly

I.              Introductions

II.            Overview of Previous Meeting

Jil quickly reviewed her notes from the March 5, 1999 meeting.  Asked for a volunteer to take minutes, to improve record keeping at meeings.

III.          Update on FICMNEW and Executive Order on Invasive Species (Nancy Benton)

This is the Federal Interagency Committee on Managing Noxious and Exotic Weeds. 

Includes representatives from various agencies and divisions within the USDA, Dept. of Interior, Dept. of Defense, Federal Transportation Administration, EPA, and NGO and Industry.  Group meets once a month.

Nancy suggests that we look at their subcommittee structure as a source of ideas/possible model of MA-EPPC.  The FICMNEW subcommittees include:

1.       Public Action Through Education and Partnership
2.       Early Detection and Rapid Response
-         state and regional partnerships, alert system
3.       Fundraising
4.       On-the-ground Management
-         web-based resource list
5.       Prevention, Prediction, Prioritization of Species
-         currently reviewing existing gateway and ranking/prioritization systems
6.       Research and Technology Transfer
7.       Weed Policy (Faith Campbell on this committee)
8.       (under consideration) Information Management (in response to Executive Order see below)

For information about the next FCMNEW meeting, or to get on the mailing list, contact Gary Johnston at the NPS:  (202)208-5886 or email gary_johnston@nps.gov.

President Clinton's Executive Order (EO) on Invasive Species issued February 8, 1999. Calls for establishing a National Council, and Advisory Committee and a Management Plan (including information management system) within 18 months of issuance (that's July 2000).  National Council includes secretaries of Interior, Agriculture and Commerce haven't had their first meeting yet.  There is talk of hiring permanent, dedicated staff for the National Council.  Word is that the National Council will encourage the formation of state and regional councils.

Randy Westbrooks' name came up he works for APHIS in North Carolina, and has been given time and support to travel to states throughout the east and help inspire/motivate formation of state weed councils.  Discussion ensued:

• some expressed concern about the agricultural bias of the new State Weed Councils
• the lack of overlap between agricultural weeds and natural areas weeds was noted
• group agreed that it is a challenge to bring state Agriculture representatives under the EPPC umbrella
• Wayne Tyndall (MD DNR) noted that there Pennsylvania offer good example of positive partnership btw. Ag. and Natural Areas folks.
• Lane Heimer (from MD Dept. of Agriculture) voiced view that Agriculture Departments (at state and county levels) can see the benefits of Weed Councils, even when there is a major focus on Natural Area Weeds

IV.         Presentation on "Partners in Preservation" project (Sarah Bishop)

Partners in Parks is a non-profit whose mission is to work with public land managers to accomplish their research and resource management objective by involving volunteers.  Sarah shared a very successful weed control project, in which Partners in Parks facilitated a partnership between ROTC students at the University of Washington, and the resource management and botany staff at Olympic National Park. The project was funded by the Department of Defense.

Sarah also distributed and briefly reviewed a draft manual, titled "Partners in Preservation: Using Volunteers to Control Exotic Plants."  This manual was written for resource managers, but could also be used as background resource to volunteers.  It provides a very basic primer in the problem of exotic plant species and the management tools to address problem, and more extensive guidance and resources on recruiting, training and supervising volunteers for this work.  Sarah says she knows it needs some updating (it is dated 1997, but much of the work on in was done in 1995-96), and it was written specifically for the Department of Defense, so might need to be edited for a more general audience.  She is soliciting review and feedback:  is this manual worthwhile?  is there a market/niche for it?  is the scope to broad, or too narrow?

Comments are due to Sarah by the next meeting.  If you have any questions or comments before then, or if you would like to review a copy of "Partners in Preservation", contact Sarah at (202)364-7244 or partpark@cqi.com.

V.           List Server

Kathy Bilton is going to set up a list server through an service on the internet (this has now been done if you have not received a message regarding the list serve, but would like to be on the list serve, email Kathy at:  kathy@fred.net ) 

More information on the list server has been distributed through the list servers itself. Group discussed a few very basic guidelines for using the server:

1.       no personal stuff (announcements about items for sales, soliciting for causes, etc), no jokes only post messages that are pertinent to the general purpose of the list

2.       be conservative about sending a response to the entire list unless your response is of general interest, reply only to the individual who posted the question/request/comment you are responding to

3.       always include a clear and meaningful phrase in the subject line

VI.         MA-EPPC list of state contacts and representatives

Carol Jelich volunteered to maintain the mailing list.  If you have corrections or additions to the mailing list, contact Carol at jrj_csj@mindspring.com or (410)757-8158.

Email addresses greatly facilitate low-cost, low-effort communications please include email addresses for yourself or any new contacts you are adding, whenever available.

There was some confusion about the nature/purpose of the current mailing list (the most recent version of which was distributed at the meeting.)  Names and contacts seen to fall into three types:

1.       core group (individuals, agency or group representatives who will actively contribute to organizing MA-EPPC)

2.       public meeting group (individuals, agency or group representative who would be interested in attending and participating in a public meeting)

3.       membership list (individuals, agencies, organizations that would be interested in services or information provided by MA-EPPC)

At this stage, we are only compiling contact information for groups 1 and 2 please do not add anyone to the list that falls into category 3.  If you have been compiling lists that include folks in category 3, please hold onto those, or be sure that they are clearly labeled so that Carol won't add them to the currently active mailing list.

VII.       Discussion of desired direction of group, discussion/formation of working committees

In a rather spontaneous and organic process, we put up the list of general areas of action from the March 5 meeting, and suggested and discussed committees to begin work in several of these areas.  Some of the committees are invisioned as standing, others will be ad hoc. Some can begin work right away, others were more long-term suggestions. 

List of proposed committees, with volunteers (* denotes committee leader), and description of purpose of committee as discussed (and as understood by this notetaker!!) follows:

Survey Committee (ad hoc)

purpose:  to develop and implement a phone survey of current and potential MA-EPPC contacts, to determine what services or resources our prospective members need

*Lane Heimer, Phil Panill, Faith Campbell

Mission Scoping Committee (ad hoc)

purpose:  develop recommendations for the organizational committee on mission of the MA-EPPC; gather and review information on ongoing activities in the region, nationally and in other groups; look for gaps or a unique regional role; consider the issue of plants only or all types of exotic pests

with input from the Survey Committee

Larry Morse (not leader), Jil Swearingen?, John Randall? 

NEED VOLUNTEERS FOR THIS COMMITTEE

Web-based Networking Committee

purpose:  to develop and implement a web-based, searchable database that would provide users with information on exotic species resources (experts, publications, programs, projects, conferences, etc.)

*Donnelle Keech, Dale Nisbet, John Beckman

Outreach and Public Education Committee

(with a special focus on synthesizing reasearch/technical information for land managers and the lay person)

Mary Handley, Louisa Thompson, Nicky Staunton

Inventory and Monitoring Committee

purpose: ??

Nancy Benton, Wayne Tyndall, P.J. Harmon

Policy Committee

purpose: use education, outreach, media to influence policy consider the broader perspective, be mindful of our unique context and the opportunity it give MA-EPPC to influence national policy makers

*Faith Campbell

Management Programs and Strategies Committee

purpose: facilitate and support on-the-ground projects, focusing mostly on volunteers and fundraising

Louisa Thompson, Wayne Tyndall

Newsletter Committee

purpose: to produce a regular MA EPPC newsletter

tabled for future consideration consensus that we need clear leadership, more developed organization, need to generate content first (although suggestion was made that a "visiting contributor" method, where individuals contribute articles about their own agencies/organization's work, could generate content in advance of major activity by MA-EPPC itself.

Symposium/Conference Committee

purpose: to organize event for fundraising and networking purposes

tabled for future consideration consensus that we need clear leadership, more developed organization first

VIII.     Leadership of Mid-Atlantic EPPC

Jil reiterated her statement from the first organizational meeting that she has been facilitating these early organizational meetings, but she cannot be the President of the MA-EPPC.

We discussed the Chair v. President title.  John Randall stopped in at about this point, provided his perspective from the California EPPC, of which he was the founding Chair/President.  They started with title "Chair" because it was less intimidating or daunting for the nominated person.  They later changed to "President" because they wanted the clout that title held with the outside world.  Another suggestion from John:  in CA they set clear, up-front term limits for President of 2 years, so the President (and the rest of the group) knew that new leadership would take over at that time.

We had a secret ballot nomination for President.  Two individuals received more than one nomination Nancy Benton and Donnelle Keech.  Both immediately declined to be considered, citing existing work commitments.  There were eight other names nominated.  Jill and Larry Morse agreed to contact those individuals and discuss their interested in leading the group.

A suggestion was made to recruit graduate students from relevant programs (like Conservation Science program at U of MD) to participate in the group.  Students could provide a welcome influx of energy and time John Randall was a graduate student when he helped start the CA EPPC. Donnelle Keech agreed to call contacts at University of Maryland.

Also mentioned during this discussion, Grian Bowen of the TN EPPC is drafting some guidelines for starting an EPPC.  Greg Jewbinski (sp?) of FL EPPC is also putting together a package on the FL experience with starting such a group.

IX.         Show and Tell/Handouts

There were literally dozens of handouts or pass-arounds meeting announcements, couple of new publications, etc.  Keep an eye on the list server, or come to the next meeting if you'd like to get the details!