Plan Awards
Congratulations to the Recipients of the 2007 North American Waterfowl Management Plan Awards!
International Canvasback Award Recipients
Mr. Jerry Serie
Jerry Serie’s rich background in research, partnership development, coordination, and communication, spanning a 35-year career, were critical in helping guide the Service’s migratory bird program.
Jerry conducted several important studies of canvasback breeding biology in Manitoba and fall migration ecology on the Upper Mississippi River in Wisconsin and Illinois. This research filled substantial gaps in our understanding of canvasback ecology and directly influenced national management programs for canvasbacks.
Jerry has served as the Atlantic Flyway Representative since1984 and over the years assembled a diverse coalition of managers, researchers, and landowners to improve the status of migratory birds and their habitats in the Atlantic Flyway.
He presided over numerous contentious issues, such as closing of Canada goose hunting seasons, severe restrictions on the harvest of black ducks, and the establishment of tundra swan hunting season in mid-Atlantic states.
He also actively promoted the development of the Black Duck Joint Venture, serving from its inception as the U.S. Co-chair of the Technical Committee.
Jerry’s background, expertise, and quality of leadership contributed significantly to our collective ability to manage migratory birds on the North American continent.
Dr. Steve Wendt
Steve Wendt was a visionary leader in bird conservation for over 30 years and he brought an attitude of respect, integrity and professionalism to all interactions with his extensive network within Canada, the United States and Mexico.
As the Chief, and later Director, of Migratory Birds at the Canadian Wildlife Service, Steve implemented a variety of legislative and regulatory amendments to protect waterfowl, some of them contentious and controversial.
As the Canadian Co-chair of NAWMP, Steve oversaw the development of several NAWMP plans and updates. He was an interim leader of the NAWMP Science Support Team, and for many years the Canadian co-chair of both the Arctic Goose and Black Duck Joint Ventures, and a board member of the Sea Duck Joint Venture. He was also an active participant in the Adaptive Harvest Management working group.
Beyond his professional accomplishments, Steve undertakes extensive activity on behalf of wetlands and waterfowl in his spare time.
Clearly Steve’s talents and dedication have been tremendously important in initiating, maintaining and building the support for and success of NAWMP in Canada and throughout North America.
Dr. Mike Anderson
Dr. Michael G. Anderson has been a central leader in the implementation of the North American Waterfowl Management Plan (NAWMP) since its establishment in 1986. He has consistently served in many regional, national and international leadership capacities in support of NAWMP. He has emerged as perhaps the most knowledgeable international leader of all professionals involved in the NAWMP an has served on essentially every international NAWMP committee, team and working group for almost 20 years.
Dr. Anderson has been intimately engaged evaluation programs of the Prairie Habitat Joint Venture (PHJV), widely-recognized as one of the most significant examples of adaptive resource management in the world. He shepherded the PHJV Assessment to the stage where it has become a model for other joint venture evaluation programs and is an extraordinarily valuable basis for waterfowl conservation programs in prairie Canada and beyond.
Dr. Mike Anderson is a singularly extraordinary scientist, administrator and leader in North American wetlands and waterfowl conservation.
National Blue-winged Teal Award Recipients
Mr. Steve Moran
Steve Moran has been the Rainwater Basin Joint Venture (RWBJV) Coordinator since 1993. He has molded the RWBJV into a model for habitat conservation partnerships based on trust and cooperation with many private landowners, thereby achieving unprecedented wetland improvements on private lands.
His partnering skills again were demonstrated with the addition of the Great Plains GIS Partnership in Grand Island which enables the RWBJV and Playa Lakes JV to share resources and benefits.
Steve excelled in leading his partners to Washington D.C. to seek funding for the JVs. In making it more of a partnership than a granting source, he has applied funding from the Nebraska Environmental Trust (NET) to accomplish habitat conservation in the RWBJV.
Steve was the driving force that brought together JV partners from the Central Flyway, the Central Flyway Council and their Waterfowl Technical Committee for a meeting at the 2006 North American Duck Symposium to discuss the future of the relationship between the two communities. He continues to support JV dialogue with the Central Flyway Council and Waterfowl Technical Committee.
The various partners of the RWBJV have a tremendous sense of pride in the focus, habitat conservation work and vision that has evolved in the JV since his tenure. There is little doubt that the RWBJV would have achieved its current level of exposure, respect and accomplishments without the exemplary contributions of Steve Moran.
Mr. Ron Reynolds
Since 1991 Ron Reynolds has served as the Project Leader for the USFWS Habitat and Population Evaluation Team in Bismarck, ND. Ron’s contributions to the conservation and understanding of waterfowl and their associated wetland and grassland habitats at state, national, and international levels are substantial. For example, his office has developed state of the art spatial landscape planning tools that are the envy of NAWMP joint ventures and waterfowl practitioners continent-wide.
Ron developed and led the Multi-Agency Approach to Planning and Evaluation process in North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana, producing the first detailed quantitative plan for waterfowl conservation in the Prairie Pothole Joint Venture (PPJV).
Ron spearheaded a major effort to digitize NWI data and use this information in conjunction with waterfowl pair regression models to produce the well-known “Thunderstorm” maps of waterfowl pair distributions and densities. Land cover and thunderstorm data were combined to produce the decision matrix map, the principal tool which guides landscape-level wetland and upland habitat conservation in the PPJV.
He guided the USFWS Four-Square Mile sampling survey - a principal survey used to determine the status of waterfowl populations and habitat in the PPJV. He has remained a staunch advocate for this vital, long-term survey and has managed it as an operational program for NWRs and the PPJV for 18 years.
Ron Reynold’s evaluation of the importance of the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) to breeding waterfowl in the PPJV is routinely cited to support maintaining this important habitat conservation program. This includes data showing CRP habitats support production of over two million ducks annually in the PPJV.
Ron is a respected and proven leader in waterfowl and wetlands conservation in the Prairie Pothole Region and his advice and guidance is regularly sought by individuals and agencies throughout the U.S. and Canada.