An organizational meeting was held at the San Diego Zoo on November 8-9, 2005. Sixty three individuals representing 30 organizations participated at the meeting or over the web.

Rationale: Natural resource managers face complex decisions that require a clear understanding of the status of wildlife populations and their habitats. Monitoring is key to making effective management decisions and evaluating the outcomes of those decisions. Unfortunately, limited resources, and jurisdictional boundaries compromise the ability of resource managers to effectively monitor the status of biological targets and the outcomes of management actions. Most monitoring and evaluation is driven by specific projects and short term information needs, with limited utility for other research and management decisions. The lack of coordination and collaboration also impairs our ability to take advantage of economies of scale and make the most of limited resources. Too often, monitoring is the last thing to get done and the first thing to be cut.

Goal: Improve the accessibility of monitoring efforts to resource managers to aid them in decision-making for multiple purposes at multiple scales.

Develop practical resources that can help the resource management community develop and improve monitoring efforts to support more effective evaluation and decision making.

Core Resources (to be hosted by the National Biological Information Infrastructure):

• Monitoring Protocol Library - An internet accessible, searchable database that provides information on monitoring protocols and resource assessment methodologies organized to facilitate reference and use. This is not a database of monitoring data or results, but rather a database of protocols. It will be a library or catalog, not a warehouse, developed and maintained by users, under the management of an archivist/librarian.



• Monitoring Locator - An internet-based, GIS application that allows users to identify what natural resource monitoring is being conducted within a particular area (e.g., State, county, Canadian Province, or other selected geographic area). Users of this system will have search tools to find out about ongoing and historic monitoring according to the scales, targets, and objectives that are of interest to them.

Organization: The Partnership is an open and inclusive process committed to the goal of improving monitoring efforts in order to support effective evaluation and decision-making, which encourages participation by organizations and individuals committed to that goal. We held an organizational meeting and will hold other occasional meetings as needed.