Ecology and Conservation of Grassland Vertebrates

The Ecology and Conservation of Grassland Vertebrates conference will be hosted jointly by the George M. Sutton Avian Research Center of the Oklahoma Biological Survey at the University of Oklahoma, and the Oklahoma chapter of The Nature Conservancy from April 15-19, 2008. The conference will be held at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, Oklahoma. Building on a successful grassland birds conference co-hosted by the Sutton Center in 1995, this conference will be expanded to include all grassland vertebrates. A call for papers and registration information will be available in the near future, and a peer-reviewed publication resulting from papers presented at the conference is anticipated. The conference will include field trips to the Wichita Mountains NWR where bison and elk graze mixed grass prairie, and The Nature Conservancy’s 39,000 acre Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, where long term ecosystem studies of the effects of fire, bison grazing, and various cattle grazing regimes are underway in this largest remaining protected tract of native tallgrass prairie in North America.

For more information as it becomes available, visit www.suttoncenter.org or www.nature.org/oklahoma.