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Rotary Club of Casper WY
Meeting Summary
03/02/2015
President Bill DeGraeve called the meeting to order at 12:30 welcoming all Rotarians and guests to Rotary. He reminded us that there are sympathy cards being passed around for the family of Frank Cordiner who we lost this past weekend.
Inspiration, Pledge, 4-Way Test:
Tim Monroe
Greeters:
Brian Oliver and Vickie Diamond were our greeters and Bri
an introduced guests:
Cori Burton introduced Sgt. Joe Nickerson;
Anthony Martinez introduced Scott Peterson;
Robin Mundell introduced Alaina Stedillie;
Chad Nelson introduced Steven Schnell;
Vickie Diamond introduced Chad Pew;
John Griffith introduced Bill DeGraeve’s guest Lynette Boatwright;
Suzie McMurry introduced Mark Stuhlmiller;
John Jorgensen introduced Janella Werth;
Kevin Hawley introduced Lindsey Svejkovsky;
Brian introduced our visiting Rotarian, Dennis Jack;
Martha Rakestraw introduced her guests Brown Ewing, and Tom Mosley. She also introduced the parents of our student of the month Ed and Deanna Reish;
Bill DeGraeve introduced our exchange student Giulia;
Song and merriment:
Pinky Ellis treated us to a good chuckle and then Gary Pehrson had us take a moment of silence for the loss of fellow Rotarian Frank Cordiner, he then led us in singing “Home on The Range”
Family of Rotary:
President Bill let us know that Frank Cordiner’s services will be held at the Shepherd of the Hills Presbyterian Church on Friday, March 6, 2015 at 3:30 PM. Bill also stated that Rick Reiman lost a brother in-law this past week so remember him and his family as well.
John Watson let us know that Stan Lowe was back in the hospital but is now back home resting comfortably. He also let us know that Brenda Peters was in the hospital last week and is now home doing well.
Rotarians of the week:
Liz Becher let us know that this Thursday will be the annual Woman of Distinction award ceremony and 5 of the 6 nominees have Rotary connections so she nominated Roxy Skogen, President of the 5 trails club, Debbie Mueller President of our Rotaract club, Robin Bromley, wife of our Rotarian Tom Bromley, Carol Tarantola wife of our Rotarian Bob Tarantola and Paulann Doane who took the time to nominate Mary Alice Tobin.
Kevin Murphy nominated John Starnes whose son was on the KWHS championship swim team and John has been a big supporter for the team.
Announcements:
Chandra Ortiz and Christine Vencill from CASA let us know about their upcoming Red Wagon event on Friday March 27, which Rotaract will be helping with and asked us for volunteers to help with valet services for the event.
President Bill announced that we had two members resign this past week due to being too busy with their businesses, Dorothy Goodspeed and Rick Durdahl, we hope that they will return when they are able.
New Member Induction:
We inducted four new members into the club today; Lynette Boatwright, sponsored by Bill DeGraeve; Chad Pew, sponsored by Vickie Diamond; Tom Mosley and Brown Ewing sponsored by Martha Rakestraw. Welcome aboard, we look forward to getting to know you all better.
Students of the Month:
We had two great young students from KWHS, Tommy Drazick and Emily Reish.
Special Presentation:
Anthony Martinez was presented with his Paul Harris plus one pin and his sponsor pin for sponsoring Kevin Christopherson.
Club Announcements:
Hal Hutchinson announced that on Saturday April 25th at 9:00 a.m. we will be having highway cleanup for our stretch of the highway out by the airport. He said to meet at the airport entrance and we will start there. Jim Porter announced that he is donating to tickets to the Broadway show Stomp and President Bill said that we will auction them off next week for the proceeds to go to the Casper Rotary Foundation, so bring your checkbook.
Program:
John Starnes introduced Stephanie Reid who then introduced our speaker, Dee Dee Hawk, the Laboratory Director for the Wyoming Game and Fish Laboratory in Laramie WY. Dee Dee shared a great power point with us and started by sharing all of her qualifications and accomplishments which were very impressive. She has been with the lab for the past 20 years and the director for the past 11 years. She told us that Wyoming wildlife is one of Wyoming’s largest natural resources bringing in over $1.1 billion a year. The Wyoming Game and Fish is statutorily required to take care of all wildlife in the state from the horny toads and mice all the way up to the deer and elk. They manage for all of the public not just the hunters and fishermen. They do this in three different ways in the lab, animal forensics, fish health and tooth aging, and she spoke about these three areas. For fish health they test the fish that are to be stocked to the waterways of Wyoming to ensure that the fish are healthy so that the hatcheries are not introducing diseased fish to the waterways and destroying the other fish and their habitats. All of the hatcheries are a long way from the lab so they do have to travel long distances in order to perform their inspections. They take samples from the kidneys, spleens, ovaries and heads of the fish and they do bacteriology parasitology, for whirling disease, and virology tests on the samples to make sure the fish are not carrying any bacteria, virus or other diseases. If the tests come back positive for any of these then the fish have to be destroyed to make sure they are not introduced into the waterways. If they come back clean then the hatchery is sent a certificate so that they are then allowed to introduce the fish to the different waterways in the State. They also go to where the fish are spawning and take samples to make sure they are disease free. They also will do diagnostics and necropsies on fish that appear to be diseased; some are from the hatcheries or from fishermen. There are drugs that can be introduced to the fish to help take care of a lot of the sicknesses. She then spoke about the tooth aging process that they do. They get teeth in from hunters and they dissect them to check the rings just like on a tree to determine the age of the animal. They send this information to the biologists who use the information to track herds and to help determine the rotation of hunting areas so that they can control the size of the herds. She then spoke about CSI Laramie, the forensic portion of what they do. This is where she started and she still is very passionate about this work. Forensics is the application of science to law enforcement. In forensics they try to match the victim, usually the animal, to the crime scene and then to the suspect. There are not very many animal forensic labs in the country so they currently have 9 other states that they are contracted with to do their wildlife forensics for. She showed us slides about wildlife trafficking which accounts for about $50 billion a year. Many times the animals come in dead when they are trying to smuggle them in but the poachers get so much money from selling them that they expect to lose some of the animals to death or to the authorities. Rhino horns are currently worth more per ounce than gold and if they continue to be poached at the current rate they will be extinct within the next ten years. They also do DNA matching to help identify all of the different species and help find out where they come from. There is a lot of poaching going on and they help identify where the animal was poached from and to try to connect the poacher to the animal and to the crime scene or tools used in the poaching. They try to use protein analysis when possible because it is less expensive than doing the DNA testing. They also use the DNA to make sure that when they need to destroy a bear for attacking someone that they are destroying the correct bear. She told us a great story about how they used DNA to catch some poachers in Colorado that had to kill a bear that was eating the elk that they had poached and left in the back of their truck. They matched everything and were able to catch the poachers, who were from Louisiana, and got about $15,000 in fines from the poachers. She told us about a group that she helped create, the Society of Wildlife Forensic Scientists, which is active in 15 countries and has about 150 members. They have a certification program that more and more judges are requiring when they have to testify in court for a criminal wildlife case and there are three scientists at her lab who have this certification. We could tell by her presentation that she has a great passion and love for her work.
President Bill DeGraeve adjourned the meeting at 1:32 with the ring of the bell, reminding us that next week we are back at the Parkway Plaza and our program will be the Wyoming Stock Growers Association.
“Light Up Rotary”
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