Minutes from the CA Technical Committee Meeting
Thursday, December 10, 1998

Minutes from the October meeting were discussed and revised by Tech. Com. Members. After revisions were complete, a consensus was reached to accept the minutes as an accurate representation of what transpired at the Oct. 21 meeting.

Peer Review

Jay Maher asked for volunteers (2 or 3) to assist in composing a proposed work plan to address peer review priorities (what to review, and when). Dale said he would lead the sub-committee in this task. Mark Czaplewski (Mark C.), Jim Doyle, Kevin Church (or Mike Fritz) and Sharon Whitmore all volunteered to assist Dale in composing a proposed work plan. This document will be developed using the previously developed Peer Review Guidelines document that was accepted by the Governance Committee. Dale will re-circulate the Peer Review Guidelines document via email. This committee will have a draft of the proposed Work Plan by January 25, which is the next scheduled Technical Committee meeting date.

Charter

Jay addressed the Governance Committee's charge to the Tech. Com., about adopting a charter for the Committee. This task is meant to be in at least draft form by the next Gov. Com. meeting, scheduled for January 6, in Cheyenne, WY. Items needed to be addressed in this document are, but not limited to:

Dale Strickland, Jay Maher, Mark Peyton and Jan McKee will work together to complete this task. Dale contends that the membership issues need to be addressed on a formal level so membership does not become a problem in the future. The sub-committee will prepare a draft by January 5 and mail it to the rest of the committee before January 25.

Next Meeting Date and Place

The next Technical Committee meeting is scheduled for January 25, 1:00pm -5:00pm and continuing at 8:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. on the 26th. The meeting will be held at the University of Nebraska Kearney, in the conference room at the Ockinga building on West Campus.

General Comments

Mark C. asked Dale and Jay if they could provide a draft of the 21 month budget that they took to the Gov. Com. Jay said he could provide a copy at the next morning. Dale went on to detail the budget process to the Tech. Com. and how draft line items were derived. (The budget for the Tech. Com. will be e-mailed to the current membership list.)

Mark C. also asked if a presentation, given during a previous meeting, about the Glen Canyon Study could be shared with the Tech. Com. at some point in the future. Dale said that he would speak to the group and see if they would be interested in giving the presentation to the Tech. Com. at some point in the future. Mark C. felt that many of the things that these folks have gone through, in their process, might be of interest to our group.

Larry Wells would like the Tech. Com. to review the Federal GIS Standards, and decide whether this protocol would work for the Tech. Com.. He said this particular protocol was a good one and the Tech. Com. should consider adopting it when writing protocols for the monitoring and research work plan.

A conference call was placed to Denver to include Jim Lutey and Jan McKee in the discussion concerning the five sub-committee's Monitoring and Research needs of the Terns, Plovers, Whooping Crane, Pallid Sturgeon and Other Species lists. Jim's general concerns were that there was too much emphasis on research and not enough on monitoring tasks. Jim feels that many of the research needs will be dealt with in the Baseline data that the USFWS is responsible for. This document, Jim explained, will not be available until June or July of 1999. Dale, as well as others from the Tech. Com., expressed concerns that some of the monitoring and research tasks could not be delayed until that time. Dale and other Tech. Com. members also suggested that the monitoring tasks, from the different list, were more prevalent than the research needs and that research would only be initiated if deemed necessary to collect information needed to make detailed inferences about any certain species.

Objectives---Research and Monitoring Needs

Mark Peyton, chairperson of the Terns & Plovers sub-committee, stepped through the objectives, research and monitoring needs of both species. After some word smithing and re-arranging of priorities and rankings, a consensus was reach, by the entire Tech. Com. that the document was ready for the next step of the process; having specific protocols written for individual monitoring and research needs.

The meeting was adjourned at approximately 5:15pm. Many of the Tech. Com. members attended a reception, hosted by UNK, at the Frank House. The members enjoyed hors d'oeuvres, fruit punch and a brief tour of the Frank House.

December 11, 1998

The meeting came to order at approximately 8:10am. Dale stepped through a proposed agenda for the day. A small amount of unfinished business concerning the difference between Plover chick habitat versus Tern chick habitat was addressed and concluded in the first 15 minutes. The consensus arrived at the previous day, concerning the Terns and Plover documents being ready for protocol writing, stood.

Objectives---Research and Monitoring Needs continued

Jim Jenniges, appointed chairperson of the Whooping Crane sub-committee by default, began the Whooping Crane portion of the objective prioritizing and ranking process. After a lengthy discussion, a consensus was reach that the Whooping Crane document was ready to be put through the protocol writing phase of the process.

Jeff Lucas, chairperson of the Other Species sub-committee, outlined the prioritization of the objectives, research and monitoring needs of the Other Species document. Much discussion, from the entire Tech. Com. determined the need for a re-working of the categories under Objective #2. Jeff Lucas, Mike Fritz, and Gary Lingle agreed to re-write the original document to reflect the changes agreed on by the Tech. Com.

Gene Zuerlein, chairperson of the Pallid Sturgeon sub-committee, outlined the sub-committee's objectives and research and monitoring needs within those objectives. The committee came to a consensus on the prioritization and the ranking of these objectives along with the research and monitoring needs of the Pallid Sturgeon.

Jeff Lucas presented the proposed changes to the Other Species sub-committee document. The entire Tech. Com. accepted the changes and a consensus was reached that the prioritization of this document was completed. The document is now ready to go through the protocol writing process along with the rest of the targeted species documents.

Protocol Definition/Outline

Dale and Mark C. discussed the draft protocol definition outline, compiled by Dale and Mark C. Dale handed out sample protocols that had been collected from other places. If anyone would like more examples, please contact Jeff Lucas. The committee, as a whole, decided that they would like to see a stand-alone definition of what protocol means along with the composed Definition/Outline document provided at this meeting. Dale said that he would attempt to provide this stand-alone definition at the next meeting.

The entire Tech. Com. then took on the task of determining which monitoring needs, a combination from all sub-committees, should be recommended to the Gov. Com. as protocol worthy, at their next meeting. Due to time constraints, the entire Tech. Com., those persons still in attendance, decided to have Dale determine the research needs that would be presented to the Gov. Com. as protocol worthy. Dale will use the research tasks agreed upon by the entire Tech. Com., from all sub-committee groups, as a template to comprise the list.

Sub-committee chairs were asked to vigorously pursue informal reviews on their documents to determine if any important issues, dealing with their category, had been missed. The chairpersons agreed to accomplish this task then send any additional comments to Dale so he could get those comments out to the entire committee for review.

The committee came to a consensus on a draft agenda for the next meeting (January 25, 1999).

Meeting adjourned at 1:15pm.

For further information, contact the Technical Committee chair

 

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