Mike Hodge, our Wildlife Habitat Council (WHC) representative asked us several months ago to speak at the 12th symposium on building an interactive wildlife website.

The REWHC Raytheon Website is breaking new ground in using interactive website technology to bring a wildlife team together, share a process, and self-document the process for certification. Mike has been using our website at rewhc.org as an example to other corporations interested in getting on-line. As the website designer/author, I was asked to put together a presentation and deliver it during the symposium in Baltimore. What follows is a trip report of what occurred.

I arrived Sunday evening for check-in and got the directions for early Monday Field Trips which included a half-day of either bird watching, plant identification, or wildlife photography. I chose the wildlife photography and we left at 7AM with wildlife photographer, Lynda Richardson, making our way to gunpowder river park. There, we viewed an Eagle's nest and used recordings to bring birds in close. Better photography options included several "rehabilitation" birds placed in trees that we were able to get real close shots of. Birds included a great horned owl, a screech owl, a red tailed hawk, and a black vulture. We were warned not to get too close to the vulture who did not like women and would tend to throw up on them (a natural defensive measure). Photos in development will be posted as they arrive.

The afternoon involved keynote speakers and the bug people. They provided a presentation where they showed that insects dominate the ecosystem in terms of numbers of species compared with other groups. Bugs, however, get little respect. They brought in a menagerie of monster bugs to promote insect education in each of our home programs. Starting small with beatles the size of a quarter, they quckly moved up past hissing cockroaches the size of your palm, to Madagascar Millipedes over a foot long, walking sticks, and grasshoppers. They had plenty on hand and promoted everyone holding one and having it walk/slither across their arm/hand. A big hit! Photos in development coming soon!

Tuesday involved a number of panel discussions where other sites provided presentations on a number of topics from invasives management to techniques in working with local organizations, to our own Raytheon presentation which went on after lunch. Our presentation was a real hit! It was received well with a lot of interest including follow-up e-mails. The emphasis was on collaboration and sharing of lessons learned and developed website code. Since our website is self-documenting, the normally daunting documentation needed for certification would be the website itself and separate documentation unneeded.

A word on certification. There are several hundred sites which are certified across the country and each year they must recertify. We are the first corporate site in Rhode Island considering certification. Certification is possible after a minimum of one year's committment to wildlife management programs as documented either on paper or website. Mike Hodge and I discussed the creation of a wildlife website "kit" customizable for other WHC sites to start with. I mentioned an interest, but mentioned that this would involve a much greater committment that I could make alone without corporate support. The opportunity to reinforce Raytheon's name out there as a leader in wildlife management is present if we choose to accept the challenge.

Certification cycles start in the June/July time frame whch means that while we have met the conditions for certification, we will have to wait and submit this summer and receive certification at the next Symposium. We should be prepared to bring a Raytheon contingent to the next symposium to receive certification.