JACKSON – During the opening round of the Western Governors Association annual meeting on Sunday afternoon, 11 governors and three Canadian province premiers met to discus the vital need for improved data collection, planning, mapping, regulations and enforcement – all designed to understand the needs of wildlife and avoid development conflicts.

Tom
 Brokaw, an NBC special correspondent and avid outdoorsman who had interviewed governors Freudenthal, Ritter and Schwarzenegger (CA) earlier for the “Meet the Press” program, urged the governors to make the mapping technology and information available to the public via the Internet, heightening the prospects for an informed citizenry participating in critical issues.

Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne told the audience that all of the issues discussed at the WGA – migration corridors, energy development, climate change, transmission lines – are all interconnected.

“You often have world-class habitat sitting right above world-class energy reserves,” he said.

WGA working groups this year developed recommendations on how to best identify crucial habitat and critical migration corridors in the West. The governors agreed to create the Western Wildlife Habitat Council that will continue to work on wildlife habitat issues including habitat loss and fragmentation in the West.

"Now that we've identified and characterized the nature of the challenge, we must take the next step and begin implementing the recommendations," said Utah Gov. Jon M. Huntsman, Jr., WGA's Vice
Chairman who will assume the chairmanship of the organization on July 1. “It is clear from today's discussion that there is no time to waste.” 


For Brodie’s full article on the first day of WGA annual meeting, go to Regional News and click on West-central.