Mark your calendars for the annual SECAS symposium!

• 78th Annual SEAFWA Conference in Augusta, GA
• Monday, October 14, 2024
• 1:20 – 5:00 pm

You are invited to join the SECAS symposium at the upcoming Southeastern Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (SEAFWA) conference this fall. This symposium builds on the success of the Southeast Landscape of the Future Summit held in New Orleans, LA earlier this year in February 2024. The Summit brought together conservation leaders from state, federal, Tribal, and private organizations to define collaborative approaches to address broad regional conservation challenges and resulted in agreement and commitment to increase collaboration across boundaries and among sectors. The Summit was designed to deepen relationships with new and existing conservation leadership communities, gain perspectives on critical conservation issues facing the Southeast, and discover common priorities. Understanding that today’s actions will contribute to the landscape one hundred years from now, attendees were asked to contemplate a strategic approach emphasizing broader and deeper collaboration to achieve the desired future.

Arising out of the Summit, the Southeast Landscape of the Future Initiative is an effort to achieve a Southeast landscape that fully supports natural, cultural, and economic processes, where leaders and decision makers strive for collective action in their allocation of resources and commitment to sustainability.

The SECAS symposium at the SEAFWA conference, Building the Southeast Landscape of the Future Together, advances a commitment to collaboration and features a 40-min panel discussion among members of the SECAS Steering Committee, SEAFWA Directors, state forestry leaders, federal agency leaders, and Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (AFWA) Landscape Conservation Joint Task Force representatives. Panelists will provide their perspectives on advancing landscape-scale conservation to influence the sustainability of ecological and social processes across the region. Panelists will also consider:

• What actions are needed now to ensure a viable landscape in the future, what are the top priorities, and who decides?
• Is there a central challenge or set of challenges that cross organizational boundaries and limit achieving the desired landscape?

To effectively address those broad challenges, society must move from transactional practices to transformational approaches. This also requires participation from other sectors essential to defining the Southeast landscape of the future, including energy, transportation, industry, and agriculture.

First and foremost, however, the natural resources sector must get its own house in order, determining top priorities for sustaining wildlife, fulfilled through State Wildlife Action Plan implementation and regional conservation of Species of Greatest Conservation Need, successfully demonstrating to outside entities the possibilities for collaboration across sectors and boundaries.

• How can fish and wildlife agencies be leaders in this effort?
• Can there be a call to action?
• Are there needs and opportunities for inter-regional collaboration extending beyond the Southeast?
• What organizations, entities, and people are needed to advance transformational change at this scale?

These and other questions will be considered by the panelists, and more broadly in breakout sessions for facilitated discussion with all symposium attendees.

The symposium will also feature overviews of the Southeast Conservation Blueprint, the SECAS Goal Report, and a discussion of social network analyses using strategic approaches for building and managing collaborative networks. We look forward to seeing you there!