IANRP Annual Workshop

Previous meeting minutes and workshop descriptions

Future IANRP Workshop Locations

From: Dave.Younkin@state.co.us [mailto:Dave.Younkin@state.co.us]
Sent: Monday, October 04, 2004 1:52 PM
TO: IANRP

           I want to take a moment to personally thank you for the well run and informative workshop you created this year and to make a few comments about some of the subject matter that was presented.

            I always find a wealth of information at these workshops and never fail to take home additional knowledge and skill sets that would otherwise be unavailable to me. As I attended the various presentations one thought continuously stuck in my mind. That was that I was in the presence of many thousands of hours of accumulated knowledge that is rarely in one place at one time. For example--flying time. The lowest time pilot that I was aware of was near 3000 hours and the highest time that I was aware of was 20650 hours. Therefore if you just average those two figures the mean would be 11825 hours. Now if you multiply by say 20 members you get about 236500 hours of experience that was represented at our workshop. I realize that these figures are not empirical but the point is we, the membership of IANRP have a vast experience pool from which to draw on for all the things that are accomplished within the DNR structures across the country. In addition the people who made presentations were people who apparently have devoted their careers and many hours to studies that have direct relationships to our field of endeavor.

            Dr. Warren Jensen's presentation was very well done and brought to mind things that many of us do not consider in our daily activities. The subject of carrying preserved animals in dry Ice is one that many of us have probably done without too many consequences. The toxicity of many of the construction items as well as interior materials in an aircraft was a real eye opener as well.  

            The presentation by Darrell Bulduc was certainly very well done and was obviously based on many years of experience in a variety of scenarios that had applications for all of us in our everyday operations as well as choices to make when we replace or rebuild our engines. The discussion could still be going on and illustrates (via the question asked) how diverse our flying applications are.

             I always get a lot from the presentations on wildlife research and certainly enjoyed the Pronghorn, Bighorn sheep and Moose research reports.  These certainly related well to some of the goals and techniques that we have and use in Colorado. Through some brief discussions with Jeff and Al I find that aerial surveys and research requirements are much the same from state to state with one of the major variations being weather and how it is coped with.

            Thanks to Dan Svedarsky for his enthusiastic support of IANRP. He exudes interest and enthusiasm by his very presence and has a knack for making his presentations very interesting. Additionally his making the cafeteria at Crookston available for our meal and business meeting was certainly a plus .

            We from Colorado were very pleased with the presentation by Chris Kochanny on wildlife telemetry and the aviation applications. His offer to give advice and to offer to accept phone inquiries at any time is something that certainly is a gesture that we in Colorado will take advantage of. His explanation of Antennae orientations for various applications as pertains to wide area scanning and more accurate locations for the purpose of retrieving transmitters and habitat identifications is a facet that I will personally be able to use immediately.

            Safety is always a primary concerns for we DNR pilots and was addressed several times during the workshop. I do not want to omit or otherwise diminish any thing that was presented but I do have to say that those topics covered by our own Mike Vivion were absolutely great. Mike has a way of putting across a mass of useful information in a very entertaining and useful format. I want to thank him especially for making his “Moose Turn” CD available to everyone—it is a tool we can all use to help our biologists and researchers who ride with us understand why we must sometimes alter our techniques in the interest of safety.

            Dick Stoltman's presentation is one I’m certain all of us are continuously concerned with and we all know that Dick can be counted on for support and advice on any application that he is familiar with. From personal experience I know that he has many sources he can recommend for most DNR applications. And thanks to Al for making the film available to those who requested it. It is the one Dick used.
          
            Again The University people from both North Dakota and Minnesota bent over backward to facilitate our meeting and their enthusiasm for our organization is certainly genuine and so thanks to them .