Organization

ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE: GoMAMN is comprised of three bodies:

(1) Community of Practice;

(2) Coordination Committee;

(3) Working Groups.


Community of Practice
The Community of Practice includes an array of stakeholders that advance bird conservation by providing a forum to unify and share knowledge to design, integrate, and implement coordinated bird monitoring at appropriate temporal and spatial scales. The Community of Practice is an opportunity for partners to identify priorities, standards, issues, concerns, and needs underpinning bird monitoring. The Community of Practice also promotes and enables support for bird monitoring via a distributed outreach and education network.

A meeting open to the entire Community of Practice shall be held at least once annually (either virtually or in-person) with meetings organized and conducted by the Coordination Committee. As practical, in-person meeting locations will rotate amongst the 5 states in the Gulf Coast region to facilitate increased attendance and ensure local travel.

Chair: Terri Maness, Louisiana Tech University, tmaness@latech.edu
Past Chair: Evan Adams, Biodiversity Research Institute, evan.adams@briloon.org
Vice Chair: Mark Woodrey, Mississippi State University, msw103@msstate.edu
Community Manager: Vacant
Communications Manager: Jacquie Grace, Texas A&M University, jkgrace@exchange.tamu.edu
Mentoring Manager: Mary Ann Ottinger University of Houston, maotting@central.uh.edu

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Coordination Committee – Beyond the operational oversight responsibilities, the Coordination Committee serves as the forum to enable formal decision-making. All decisions made by the Coordination Committee will be via consensus, and when that is not possible, decisions will be determined by vote, with a simple majority needed. In cases of a vote-based decision, a short minority report will be included in the notes. No decisions will be made without the participation of at least 75 percent of the Coordination Committee members being represented in person or electronically. Members may assign their vote by written or electronic proxy to another member. The Coordination Committee will have a meeting (either virtual or in person) at a minimum once annually, and this may be concurrent with the Community of Practice annual meeting. Agendas will be proposed by the Chair to the Coordination Committee at least 28 days before the meeting and approved 4 days prior, and any member may add to the agenda.

AlabamaVacant
Florida: Andrew Cox, USFWS, william_cox@fws.gov
Louisiana: Robb Dobbs, Louisiana DWF, rdobbs@wlf.la.gov
Mississippi: Houston Havens, Mississippi DWFP, houstonh@mdwfp.state.ms.us
Texas: Trey Barron, Texas PWD, trey.barron@tpwd.texas.gov

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Working Groups will be established by the Coordination Committee as needed.  Membership of the working groups will be ad-hoc, voluntary, not limited in number, and include representatives from any participating entity (e.g., federal, state, non-governmental organizations, academic community, etc.) as warranted.  Working Groups will elect a chair and vice-chair by simple majority to oversee work activities and produce solution-based products (e.g., proposals, technical reports, recommendations, etc.).  Issue-based Working Groups are considered ad-hoc in nature, and may be abolished by the Coordination Committee at any time if the purpose of the group is no longer warranted.