Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

Beth Burritt (UT) reported that she would compile and submit annual meeting minutes and report for WERA. She also thanked David Kruger (WY) for all his help sending out the announcements for the California Meeting including the agenda. Our current balance is $13,314.93.

We have a surplus of funds of $3000 to $3500 dollars to use for the Rangelands Partnership. A discussion followed on how to use the funds. It was decided that funds would be available for a variety of items to support the partnership. Funds will be distributed via mini-grants. The Executive Council will draft guidelines for proposals. This year funds will be used to cover part of the travel for Barbara Hutchinson to travel to South Africa to get them involved with the RP.

Review of the 2013 Action Plan: At the 2013 meeting several Task Force groups were formed. Reports from these groups were given from Jeremy Kenyon on Digital Repository Harvesting, Nicole Mason on Hot Topics Development & Maintenance, Barb Hutchinson on International Partner Recruiting and Content Development and Amy Shannon on Marketing Rangelands West Partnership Databases.

Future Annual Meetings:

New Mexico will host the annual meeting in 2015 (exact date to be determined). Utah will host the 2016 meeting.

 Governance / Executive Committee:

David Kruger (WY) moved into Chair position and Beth Burritt (UT) rotated to Vice-Chair. Nicole Mason (ND) was elected by unanimous acclaim and welcomed as 2013/2014 Secretary- Treasurer for RWP.

On Monday, 24 March 2014, David Kurger (WY), the Vice-Chair of the Rangelands West Partnership (RWP), opened the 2014 meeting in Davis, CA. Rachel Mealor Chair of the RWP was unable to attend the meeting due to health reasons. The meeting opening was followed by a welcome from John Harper UCCE Farm Advisor and Mel George, Emeritus Professor from UC Davis.

The morning agenda included a review of RWP activities during the past year including updates and reports on: 1) the MOA between SRM and Allen Press, 2) the SRM Outreach, Communications and Website Committee, 3) the Range Science Information System (RSIS), 4) Higher Education Challenge Grant (HEC), 5) a Rangelands multimedia site called Wrangle, 6) the proposed Phase 2 of Global Rangelands/Rangelands West website redesign and 7) the Rangelands eXtension optimization grant.

We received a $50,000 grant from USDA/NIFA to conduct focus groups on use of social media by end users of the web-site, to become more actively involved in social media based on focus groups and to better integrate Global Rangelands, Rangelands West and the eXtension Rangelands Community of Practice.

In the afternoon, international partner John Taylor gave a report on the Australian Rangelands Society. Felix Ayala from University of Hermosilla, Mexico was unable to make a report because they were on strike. Barb Hutchinson gave a report on possible collaborations with South   Africa, Canada, and FAO. State updates from RWP members (13 on site, 5 virtual) followed. The Business Meeting (see above) closed out the afternoon agenda of the first day of the meeting.

The second day of the meeting (Tuesday, 25 March 2014), Ann Tanaka gave us an update on the Partnership Member only site. The site is non-public site with useful information exclusively for RWP members.

Last year’s meeting resulted in the Rangeland Partnership becoming more involved in social media. RW now has an active Facebook page; Youtube channel for the global rangelands site. Jeanne posts a relevant article on Scoop-it daily. John Harper has a blog. We discussed better use of other social media outlet such as twitter, linkedin and pinterest.

After the morning break and again after lunch, attendees participated in facilitated working group meetings on the following topics: 1) Hot Topics Development & Maintenance, 2) Adding Ag Experiment Station Records into GR/RW Database, 3) International Partner Recruiting and Content Development, 4) Marketing RWP Databases, 5) Social media, 6) GR/RW site design, and

Meeting was adjourned by David Kruger.

• Successful annual meeting of the Rangelands West Partnership (March 2013, Palmer, AK) attendees (23 on-site; 9 virtual attendees) representing 17 S. states, Australia, and Mexico.
• Successful redesign of several state Rangelands West
• Full integration of Wrangle site into Global Rangelands (videos and gigapans)
• Progress on several grants received by different RWP partners for rangelands information projects
  • USDA Higher Education Challenge Grant - Repositioning Rangeland Education for a Changing World (University of Idaho, Humboldt State University, New Mexico State University, Oklahoma State University, South Dakota State University, University of California-Davis and Utah State University)
  • Received a $50,000 grant to expand the use of social media of the eXtension Rangelands Community of Practice Site. And to integrate with Global Rangelands and Rangelands
• New MOA between Allen Press and Society for Range Management for open access for two journals: Rangelands and Rangeland Ecology and Management
• Western Extension and Research Activities (WERA) status renewal documentation approved.

Rangelands Partnership. 2014. Global Rangelands website. http://globalrangelands.org.

Rangelands Partnership. 2014. Rangelands West website. http://globalrangelands.org/rangelandswest.