Board Members present: Nancy Braker, David Hamel, Dan Undersander, Gene Roark, Thomas Boos, Steve Strachota, Patrick Goggin, Lauren Ebbecke, Jaime Corbisier, Donna Van Buecken, Rolf Utegaard

Guest Present: Kelly Kearns

Board members absent: Susan Lehnhardt, David Spatcher, Jim Reinartz

I. Administration

·        Minutes of Last Regular Meeting (June 3, 2003) Approved.

·        Treasurers Report (Boos) Approved. As of today $19,101.81 in bank with several new members and renewals. $3,447 of left from Wisconsin Electric gift for communications. Request made to treasurer to develop a budget using the financial history from the past year.

·        Membership Report (Van Buecken) 39 active members. High in membership was 101. Tom Boos, Nancy Braker and Donna will strategize about a plan for membership renewals. Donna will send a membership renewal to members, we might want to do personal contacts for those that do not respond to a mailing. We should also consider having someone sit at the registration table at the Natural Areas Conference/Invasive Plant Symposium to encourage renewals and new members, and also put IPAW brochures in the registration packets. Regional groups could distribute IPAW brochures to their members. Tom Boos is taking over maintenance of the member data base and will coordinate with Donna on this. We need envelopes printed, for mailing renewals and providing a return envelope. Nancy to get a box of each or as appropriate.

·        Secretary’s Report: Braker to investigate the need to register with the state as a charitable organization and submit reports to the Department of Regulation and Licensing. We have been exempt from this in the past, but as we look to raise more funds through grants we will have to register.

II. Committee reports:

1.      Science: (Reinartz) - Deferred

2.      Communications (Utegaard) - Newsletter, Web site. General questions wondering about the status of the newsletter. We may need to find someone to assist Jim with the newsletter to do layout and get it ready for printing. Dan will call Jim to discuss, Braker to work on finding a newsletter assistant, or we could pay someone to do layout. Members are asking about the newsletter. Jim has been doing a great job with content (much appreciated!), but his busy schedule may be a problem.

3.      Symposium 2003 and Annual Meeting Planning (Kearns) - Planning for the symposium is going well. We have about 70 speakers, 2 workshops, 5 panel discussions and a field trip lined up. Also various great displays including tools, educational materials, live plant specimens, an aquatic display and new invaders to watch for. Registration materials will be sent shortly. Fundraising is on going. We did not receive the EPA grant we applied for, but did get a $5,000 commitment from TNC. This will be split with 2K to NAA, 3K to the symposium, approved by board. If our fundraising runs short we will cover our costs through our current banked funds. Braker will get a summary of fundraising to date to board. As negotiated with NAA, IPAW will make up the difference of $40 per person for each person who registers only for the invasive plant symposium in order to keep the cost down for people attending only that part of the conference. Kelly will send summary of the conference planning to date to the whole board. Kelly has also sent information to Marcia to post on the web site. Board members will be expected to assist at the conference in various capacities. Kelly will contact you, but feel free to volunteer your time to her directly, and encourage members to assist as well. Kelly would like to have speaker notes posted on the web site; she will work with Marcia and the speakers to have this happen.

4.      Legislative (Roark) - No action on the new weed law at the moment due to the state budget issues. Roark recommends that the IPAW board send letters to DNR and DATCP secretaries to remind them of the importance of invasive species issues and to urge them to work on this issue when the budget issues are resolved. Motion made. Goggin suggests that we include information on the funding for the aquatic invasive species grant program as well. Pat will put this information together for Gene. We should also encourage the formation of the Governor’s Council on Invasive Species. CC Governor’s office (Jordy Jordahl) to keep them informed.   Motion carried. Gene will draft letter with Kelly’s help, Dan will print and sign. We defer to Gene about how much to include in letter.

Additional idea: We should set up a field day for legislative staff to demonstrate invasive species issues. Would want to do this after the budget is resolved. Tom Boos mentioned that his discussion with Dave Ladd proved fruitful. He offered to contact legislators that he knows to solicit their involvement. We will involve Ladd in planning the legislative staff field day. We should make sure to invite the legislators and their staff that have been involved with the new weed law. We could get one or more of the other groups involved (Wisconsin Wetlands Association or The Prairie Enthusiasts) and do this locally, perhaps with cooperation with Dane County Parks or another local municipality. Gene Roark agreed to organize, Braker agreed to have a TNC staff person assist, Lauren also offered to help. This would likely happen in early September, but a date was not finalized. Tom Boos will be our contact with Dave Ladd on this project.

5.      Education (Ebbecke) Lauren is taking over the chairmanship of the committee; Jeremy is busy with his job right now and needs to give up being chair. The committee has some ideas of how to get the word out to additional groups, perhaps through our newsletter or brochure. A PowerPoint presentation on invasive plants is available on the website, board members need to review it and provide comments, make sure they are comfortable with the content.

Lauren hopes to have the committee meet in August and will report back to us on her progress. Braker to send her information on those IPAW members who have expressed an interest in the education committee.

6.      Plant Industry Relations - (Lehnhardt) No report.

III. Old Business

Chapter Proposal and Bylaw revisions (Braker and Roark) Deferred to next meeting. Need to make sure to address this topic then so any changes in bylaws could come to the members meeting in August. Braker and Roark will work with Lisa and Bernice (SE volunteers) on this issue.

Items from previous meetings for follow-up:

·        Coordination with the Wisconsin Nurseryman’s Association to address Wisconsin Nurseries selling plants of concern. (June 2003). We would like our Plant Industry Relations committee to work with the Association to assist with this project. We may need to use a different approach to address aquatic plants (the Nurseryman’s group does not work much outside woody plant groups). Steve Strachota agreed to work on this issue with Susan Lehnhardt as lead. Dan will contact Susan about this. Our contacts with the association are Greg Long and Mike Yanney.

·        Dave Ladd (Tom Boos was to contact, May 2003) Tom contacted, see legislative report, above. Dave is interested in working out how to get funds generated from timber sales on state laws available for use on invasive species. Tom Boos will continue to communicate with Mr. Ladd.

·        Providing March 2003 newsletter to wider audience (Braker, April 2003) - Braker to work on.

·        Gather suggestions from the education committee for ways that the March 2003 newsletter issue might be utilized. (Ebbecke, April 2003)   Ebbecke to continue to work on.

·        How to define which species would be on the web page under “Wisconsin’s Worst” (February 2003) Marsha wanted feedback on this. We think this topic should be called “Examples of Wisconsin’s worst” or “ Common Invasives of Wisconsin” to make it more flexible. Can we link to other sites with good information to avoid composing our own material? See the Door County group web site (http://clean-water.uwex.edu/lakeshore/dcist/) to see how they handled it. Lauren will draw up a list of proposed species to use for the board to approve. Lauren will start with our working list to make this based on our previous work. We encourage Marsha to use existing web resources as available. We also want to make sure we have photos available that people can download.

·        Ask Education Committee what groups we want to focus our attention on so we know what conferences to have our booth at and who should we send speakers to (January 2003) Lauren to put on her committee agenda and to include Rolf in the discussion.

Other matters:

IPAW will send letter to DOT head thanking them on the parsnip poster. Dan will send once Kelly gets information to him.

Dave Hamel reported on his attendance at a meeting with three county commissions to discuss leafy spurge work and other highway right of way invasive plant issues. Jim Keir organized this meeting.

Braker: Wisconsin Wetlands Association asks our help in promoting their surveys on loosestrife and phragmites. We agree that we should help promote and cooperate as appropriate. The master gardeners are getting involved with this project, as is the Beaver Creek Nature Center, Eau Claire County.

Boos: Effort going on to get mapping of woodland exotics in nine SW Wisconsin Counties, paid for by the U.S. Forest Service, organized by Iowa State, facilitated by SW RC&D. Tom will attend the meeting and see if there is a role for IPAW. The Forest Service staff will be giving a talk on this at the symposium so we can learn more about it. It seems like IPAW could have a role in cataloging the various mapping projects in Wisconsin. Future idea: Establish an invasive species mapping tool on our web site, an interactive tool. Marcia has thought about this and has some ideas on how to set it up. Concern about validity of data that might get entered by unknown persons, need to access their level of knowledge. Reporting might be limited to certain people that had been pre-approved. Similar to what Audubon does with backyard bird counts, etc. Workload could be minimal once software was designed. Should also look at the herbarium database, this may be a useful link. Undersander has worked on this for a bird data base. Suggestion made that this idea go to the science committee as a potential project for them to work on. Tom Boos will take this to the committee.

Kearns: Kelly is submitting a grant proposal to EPA/GLNPO that would have IPAW as a cooperator. Our role would be to solicit cooperators, assist with setting up training workshops, and with eradication. We need specifics on what we would provide before we can approve IPAW being listed as a cooperator. Dan will coordinate board responses once we get the specifics from Kelly.

Steve Strachota: Provides an introductory comment on his board membership, he feels that the seed industry and IPAW have similar concerns and welcomes the opportunity to have input.

Hamel: Comment on the use of leafy spurge beetles, glad to see that this is being used. Useful in some sites, but not clear that it is useful in others. Burning to remove duff layer seems important.

Braker: UWEX Plant Fact Sheets issues. Will include this discussion on a future agenda.

Boos: Highway departments. How can we work with them? Add to future agenda.

Next meeting: August 12, 1-3, at UW- Madison

Meeting adjourned 2:52.

Respectfully submitted, Nancy Braker

IPAW Secretary