by Allison Vaughn

CAS was a founding member 21 years ago of the partnership organization, the Missouri Bird Conservation Initiative, a stepdown organization of the North American Bird Conservation Initiative. Denny Donnell was a longtime MoBCI Representative and today Bill Mees has filled the role, serving as Chair for a three year term several years ago.  MoBCI helped CAS with seed money for the grassland restoration project at CANS and continues to be a great partner for sharing information.

President Lottie Bushmann gave a great presentation on Friday morning about all of the great things CAS does for birds and the community. Her talk also mentioned our chapter’s love of food-related get togethers, definitely a highlight of all of our gatherings. Thanks to former VP Judy Lincoln for stepping up for Hospitality Chair to make sure we have snacks after our meetings!

The MoBCI Conference was well attended by local CAS members, many pictured here. Missing from the photo is Betsy Garrett who was at the MoBCI Conference as a representative of the Boone’s Lick Chapter of Missouri Master Naturalists. We have posted the slides from the keynote address detailing the founding of the organization on Thursday night at the MoBCI website and the 2024 newsletter is also available there. While visiting the website, check in with the 2023 MoBCI newsletter to read Bill Mees’ great article about CANS.