Society for Wildlife Forensic Science 2017 Meeting Review | Society for Wildlife Forensic Science

With another successful SWFS meeting in the rear-view mirror, the board would like to thank everyone who attended the conference in Edinburgh during June 2017, including participants, speakers and sponsors. It takes a village to put on a successful meeting and there are too many folk involved to mention everyone in the planning process, but we would like to shout out a very special thank you to Lucy Webster and Sherryn Ciavaglia as they took care of all the heavy lifting in planning and executing the meeting. Thanks also to the symposium and workshop organizers including Trey Knott, Rebecca Johnson, Ed Espinoza, Jon Wetton, Wayne Lord, Kathy Moore, Kyle Ewart, Jamie Sells and Adrian Linacre. Kim Frazier was in charge of making the decisions about the Bob Anderson Memorial Scholarship. The Society would also like to say thanks to SASA and all the volunteers they had at the meeting that ran IT, the front desk and just about anything you asked of them. And last but certainly not least, we had a very impressive list of sponsors and vendors that allowed the board to make this meeting very inexpensive to participants, but still be at an outstanding location with many extras allowing people to experience Scotland’s hospitality and history. The city of Edinburgh was a great venue for the Society’s first non-USA based meeting and boasted an impressive 245 people including the day delegates. These attendees arrived from around the globe with a record breaking 36 countries represented. The scope and breadth of wildlife forensics affects numerous organizations and this was evident in the numerous national and international NGOs, state and provincial wildlife agencies, and federal organizations represented by the 145 different institutions present at the meeting! It was a wonderful mix of scientists, policy people and administrators, law enforcement and wildlife forensic groupies. The diversity and mixture of this group allowed for some very good conversations about building capacity and issues that are involved with the discipline. Four days of presentations highlighted their successes and struggles in the field of Wildlife Forensic Science. Below you'll find a selection of photos available for download. Watch this space for news of Denver 2019!