Were you one of the 63 individuals (about 10% of the WMC membership) who responded to the WMC questionnaire that went out with the ballot last summer? If so, your response is included in the following summary. If not, then read on to see if you agree with the opinions of your fellow WMC members.
Sixty percent of those who responded have been a member for over 5 years, and eighty percent have attended one or more WMC conferences. By contrast, half of you have never attended a field trip or recruited a new WMC member. Nearly everyone agreed that WMC is a relevant organization, and respondents were split pretty evenly as to whether or not they would serve as a WMC officer or help organize a WMC field trip. Equally mixed were the responses to raising the annual dues (if needed to provide services) and whether or not WMC communication with its members works well (pretty good job; always room for improvement).
Many suggestions were provided for improving/increasing the relevance of the WMC, and these fell into two broad categories: Communication, and Organizational Focus.
Your ideas for ways to enhance communication included: more frequent local events and one day workshops; provide educational materials; more regular publication of the Networker; expanded use of email and the web page to improve communication with the membership; and better information about membership expiration and renewal. Also included were suggestions for better outreach to those groups and organizations not currently well represented in WMC including: undergraduate and graduate students, public schools, other professional organizations and advocacy groups.
Many would like to expand the focus of the WMC. Your criticisms ranged from observations about the WMC Board (too much federal and university representation) to the membership as a whole (seems to be dominated by foresters and forest hydrologists) to the topics presented in the newsletter (highly technicalI d like to see more policy, planning, and other nontechnical articles). Your suggestions for improvement were varied: more political advocacy related to water; look beyond timberlands to include rangelands and agricultural lands; remember that watershed management issues are largely related to land use and development questions (not technical ones); address policy, planning, social science, economics, and real life watershed problems.
You ll be glad to know that many of these concerns can easily be overcomemany of them by you as an active member. You can provide outreach to groups, organize local events, write articles for the newsletter or volunteer to be a guest editor.