Dear SWFS Members,
Welcome to the March 2023 edition of the SWFS Newsletter.
I hope this newsletter finds everyone enjoying the first few months of 2023. The last six months have been busy for the wildlife forensic science community.
A few highlights include the SWFS 2022 Conference held in Ashland, OR. The inaugural SWFS meeting took place in 2010 in the same location and I have to say it was very exciting to see how the Society has grown in both membership and scientific development over the last twelve years. A very special thank you to the National Fish and Wildlife Forensic Laboratory for hosting the conference. You can read more about the SWFS conference in a couple different articles later in the Newsletter.
To start this year off the SWFS membership portal went through a major overhaul. This website project was launched to help correct a few issues that were being reported concerning membership. Primarily, members were receiving emails at random urging them to renew when their membership was in good standing. Once it became apparent that this was not an easy programming fix we hired our trusty web designer to rebuild the membership system. Though the interworking of the website is not seen by most members, every member will benefit from the changes in programming.
The last highlight I will mention is the SWFS Timber proficiency program. The timber community has been working hard with Dr. Ed Espinoza and the SWFS Proficiency Test Board to launch a proficiency test program. This was accomplished in 2022 and included participants from various disciplines including Anatomy, Machine vision, Genetics and Chemistry. Currently, interest in the 2023 test is being collected. The hope is to send the testing kits out the last week of May.
Lastly, this will be my final SWFS message as President of the Society, I would like to take the opportunity to thank every one of you who have volunteered your time to help share the news and scientific advances of SWFS. Your contributions help make our Society stronger and I thank you for that.
As always, I would like to extend my gratitude and thanks to all of you that have contributed to the SWFS Newsletters, as well as to the production team that puts this wonderful periodical together.
Gratefully,
Tasha Bauman