The Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries (VDGIF) is in the process of developing a comprehensive fish and wildlife conservation strategy to provide a common vision and plan for the Commonwealth and to comply with the state wildlife grants program of the US Fish and Wildlife Service (visit www.teaming.com for more information about these grants). In fact, all states must complete such a strategy by October of 2005. This is an opportunity to work with many constituent groups, partners, and citizens within the Commonwealth on determining the future of fish and wildlife diversity conservation in Virginia.

In order to facilitate public involvement in the process of developing the strategy, the VDGIF asked the Fish and Wildlife Information Exchange (FWIE) to develop and host a communications and web tool. The site http://www.vawildlifestrategies.org/ was launched in late August, 2004 and will stay online through October, 2005. It is be available freely to anyone with internet access that wishes to view the progress and products of the strategy development and interact with the planners and community of interested individuals providing input to the plan.

The web site will foster communications and planning among VDGIF staff and cooperators working on the strategy, as provide information and a way to provide input to the public using a website, discussion listserve, and document dissemination. The site will be primarily for distributing static information and maps, and provide tools to receive public involvement in this process.

The threaded discussion list tool will allow users to post questions, information, and responses, and see both their posting and responses to that posting in a web format. This system also supports email notification as an option for interacting with the discussion list. Users will be able to begin new threads or respond to existing threads. All postings will be captured electronically for later analysis and integration into the planning process as needed. (http://www.vawildlifestrategies.org/forum/)

For more information on FWIE, contact Lila Borge Wills at lborge@vt.edu or (540) 231-8996. For more information about the Comprehensive Wildlife Conservation Strategy, contact Becky Wajda at (804) 367-8351.