2025 Midwest Fish & Wildlife Conference: Venues

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7:00am • Speaker Ready Room Open
7:00am • Continental Breakast with Exhibitors - Sponsored by St. Louis Zoo WildCare Institute
7:00am • Conference Registration Desk Open
7:00am • Trade Show Open
8:00am • Plenary Session 1
10:05am • Coffee Break - Sponsored by Wildlife Management Institute
10:30am • Annual Membership Meeting – North Central Section of The Wildlife Society
10:30am • North Central Division AFS Business Meeting
12:00pm • Student & Professional Networking Luncheon (pre-registration required)
12:00pm • Lunch On Your Own
1:00pm • Lake and Reservoir Management Committee Meeting
1:00pm • Conservation philanthropy...it's not just about special events
1:40pm • Fisheries Track: Identifying Walleye and Lake Whitefish Spawning Habitat to Inform Habitat Improvements for Lake Sturgeon in the Lower Fox River below De Pere Dam
1:40pm • Wildlife Track: 'On The Road Again' Native Species Seeding By Midwestern DOTs and Potential Improvements
1:40pm • Wildlife Track: Low population densities of Missouri brown tarantulas (Aphonopelma hentzi) in Missouri glades.
1:40pm • S-01: Audubon’s bird conservation strategy on the Mississippi River
1:40pm • S-02: Climbing the Ladder Towards Aquatic Connectivity for Stream Fishes in Eastern South Dakota
1:40pm • S-03: CWD: Strengthening Public Involvement: Iowa’s Multifaceted Approach to CWD Outreach and Management
1:40pm • S-04: Historical Perspectives on Trout Management in Missouri
1:40pm • S-05: Fishers & Farmers Partnership: Energizing Healthy Farms & Fish Habitats Through Neighbor Connections
1:40pm • S-06: Prairie Reconstruction: Prairie Fork CA Case Study and Lessons Learned
1:40pm • Fisheries Track: Effects of Flow Variation on Recruitment in a Central Missouri Stream Fish Assemblage
2:00pm • Fisheries Track: Identifying Spawning Sites and Fidelity of Ogaa (walleye Sander Vitreus): Implications for Fishery Stewardship
2:00pm • Wildlife Track: Mastering the Flames: An overview of prescribed burning training for students and early career professionals
2:00pm • Wildlife Track: Effects of Landscape Characteristics on Occurrence and Density of Native Bumblebee Species. Fort Riley. Kansas
2:00pm • S-01: Bottomland Forest Birds along the Upper Mississippi River
2:00pm • S-02: Fish Freeways: How Rock Ramps are Assisting Prairie Stream Fish Movement
2:00pm • S-03: CWD: Identifying the Motivations and Barriers of Landowners to Participating in Targeted Removal to Manage Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) in Missouri
2:00pm • S-04: Trout Streams of the Northern Ozarks: Overview of Missouri's Ribbon Areas
2:00pm • S-05: Partnering with Private Landowners on Forest Management for Water Quality
2:00pm • S-06: Woodland Management for Biodiversity at Shaw Nature Reserve
2:00pm • Fisheries Track: Diet and Niche Overlap of Blue Catfish and Resident Reservoir Sportfishes to Inform Stocking Decisions
2:20pm • Fisheries Track: Evaluating the influence of climate change on walleye and largemouth bass consumption rates in a northern Wisconsin lake
2:20pm • Wildlife Track: PHASE: Pollinator Habitat Aligned with Solar Energy
2:20pm • Wildlife Track: The relationship between butterfly diversity and canopy cover management across 25 years in Midwestern oak savannas
2:20pm • S-01: Breeding bird community in the Mississippi River floodplain forest: Two Decades of change
2:20pm • S-02: Beyond barriers: Fish communities in a recovering tributary of Lake Erie
2:20pm • S-03: CWD: Exploring Landowners’ Support for CWD Management in Illinois
2:20pm • S-04: The Meramec River Brown Trout Dilemma - a Case Study of a Missouri Ozark Stream's Salmonid Management
2:20pm • S-05: The Power of Partnerships in Advancing Coldwater Conservation
2:20pm • S-06:Monitoring the Ecological Response to Restoration Treatments in the Missouri Pine-Oak Woodlands Restoration Project of the Mark Twain National Forest
2:20pm • Fisheries Track: Zooplankton in the Upper Mississippi River System
2:40pm • Fisheries Track: Movement of Walleye and Sauger assessed using acoustic telemetry in Lewis and Clark Lake, a Missouri River reservoir
2:40pm • Wildlife Track: Protecting Remnant Prairies and Grassland Reconstruction/Restoration Success Across Missouri.
2:40pm • Wildlife Track: Monitoring tarantulas in Missouri glades: Conservation of a charismatic arachnid.
2:40pm • S-01: Evaluating the Effectiveness of Autonomous Recording Units for Detecting Upper Mississippi River Migratory Landbirds
2:40pm • S-02: Moxostoma Migratory Movements during Restoration Efforts in the Cuyahoga River, OH
2:40pm • S-03: CWD: Decoding CWD Testing
2:40pm • S-04: Bennett Spring State Fish Hatchery Renovations
2:40pm • S-05: Conservation Counts: Building Urban and Rural Partnerships to Address Stream Biological Impairments
2:40pm • S-06: Fire effects on plant communities in Ozark woodlands and glades
2:40pm • Fisheries Track: First occurrence of American Brook Lamprey (Lethenteron appendix) in the Cuyahoga River, OH
3:00pm • Coffee Break
3:20pm • Fisheries Track: Environmental changes lead to reduced Walleye production in Mille Lacs Lake, Minnesota
3:20pm • Wildlife Track: The Role of Extralimital Exploration in Avian Range Expansion
3:20pm • Wildlife Track: Habitat Features and the Presence of Coyotes Cause the Greatest Shifts in Mammal Diel Activity
3:20pm • S-01: A framework to facilitate habitat conservation for marsh birds in the Midwest and Great Lakes regions
3:20pm • S-02: Can We Have Our Cake and Eat It to? Retrofitting an Aging Urban Dam for Multiuse, Including Recreation and Fish Passage.
3:20pm • S-03: CWD: Where Have All the Deer gone?
3:20pm • S-04: Insights into Missouri's Urban Winter Trout Program
3:20pm • S-05: Growing Relationships for Increasing Wetland Practice Adoption to Improve Downstream Water Quality
3:20pm • S-06: Burn with Care – Challenges and Considerations for Replicating Historic Fire in Missouri State Parks
3:20pm • Fisheries Track: Spatial and temporal resource use of the Upper Mississippi River
3:40pm • Fisheries Track: Evaluating the distribution of fish community production in northern Wisconsin lakes with different walleye recruitment histories
3:40pm • Wildlife Track: Investigating the effects of habitat on the distribution and abundance of Chuck-will’s-widows (Antrostomus carolinensis) in central Texas, their diet across space and time, and insect availability and preference.
3:40pm • Wildlife Track: Space use and habitat selection of a recolonized bobcat population
3:40pm • S-01: Sora and Virginia Rail Migratory Timing and Stopover Duration in the Illinois River Valley
3:40pm • S-02: Utilizing the USFWS National Fish Passage Coordination Map and the SARP National Aquatic Barrier Inventory and Prioritization Tool to Assess Stream Connectivity Across the Western Great Plains
3:40pm • S-03: CWD: CWD Hunter Harvest Initiative
3:40pm • S-04: Evaluating Brown Trout strains stocked into Spring River, Arkansas
3:40pm • S-05: Scars to Shiners. Iowa's Private-Public Partnership to Save the Endangered Topeka Shiner through Oxbow Restorations.
3:40pm • S-06: Native bee response to woodland and glade restoration on Missouri’s state parks
3:40pm • Fisheries Track: Macroinvertebrate Assemblages Using Live Freshwater Mussels as Habitat
4:00pm • Fisheries Track: Evaluation of otolith and eye lens chemistry for identifying stocked Walleye
4:00pm • Wildlife Track: Integrated dynamic occupancy models reveal declines in gamebird distributions in Illinois and sampling bias in eBird data
4:00pm • Wildlife Track: Habitat Selection of Gray Foxes in Southern Illinois
4:00pm • S-01: Monitoring grassland bird populations in Missouri & beyond
4:00pm • S-02: Connecting Freshwater Resilience and Barrier Prioritization
4:00pm • S-03: CWD: Calculating the Cost of CWD: A Minnesota Approach
4:00pm • S-04: Evaluation of the Effects of a Slot Length Limit and Stocking Changes for Rainbow and Brown Trout in Lake Taneycomo, Missouri
4:00pm • S-05: Insights, Community Development, and Other Benefits of the Watershed Leaders Network
4:00pm • S-06: Renovating Duck Creek CA: An Integrated Approach
4:00pm • Fisheries Track: Spectaclecase Mussel Detection in the Upper Mississippi River Using eDNA
4:20pm • Fisheries Track: Mille Lacs Lake Walleye: Changes in Body Condition Over Time in Relation to Biotic and Environmental Changes
4:20pm • Wildlife Track: Using the Motus Wildlife Tracking System to fill knowledge gaps for priority Neotropical migratory birds in the Midwest and beyond
4:20pm • Wildlife Track: When, where, and how prey pair antipredator behaviors to natural and anthropogenic mortality risks
4:20pm • S-01: An Assessment of Avian and Vegetation Communities on Agricultural Conservation Easement Wetlands in Eastern South Dakota
4:20pm • S-02: Facilitated Discussion - Developing an Aquatic Connectivity Team: An example from the Missouri Stream Connectivity Partnership.
4:20pm • S-03: CWD: Post-Season Targeted Removal Efforts are Worth the Work to Manage CWD
4:20pm • S-04: From Rod to Research and Resilience: How Anglers Enhance Fisheries Research and Management in Minnesota Waters of Lake Superior
4:20pm • S-05: Engaging Private Landowners through Conservation Marketing Shoal Creek Woodlands for Wildlife Case-History
4:20pm • Fisheries Track: Addressing the Data Need to Manage Future Change in Fisheries
4:40pm • Fisheries Track: Evaluating Data-limited Population Assessment Tools for Walleye
4:40pm • Wildlife Track: Expansion of Motus in Missouri and the Midwest: examples of local and large scale Motus tracking
4:40pm • Wildlife Track: Creating a state-space model to assess the population status of fishers (Pekania pennanti) in Michigan's Upper Peninsula)
4:40pm • S-01: Owl and Nightjar Monitoring in Iowa
4:40pm • S-03: CWD: Facilitated Discussion
4:40pm • S-04: Community ecology in a bottle: Leveraging eDNA metabarcoding data to predict occupancy of co-occurring salmonids and gill lice ectoparasites
4:40pm • S-05: The Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program (CREP) Aquatic Life Monitoring Project in the Illinois River and Kaskaskia River basins, Illinois
4:40pm • Fisheries Track: Assessing Habitat Quality Changes for Cool- and Warm-Water Fishes
5:00pm • S-05: The Nature Conservancy at Dog Tooth Bend
5:00pm • Invasive Species Technical Committee Information and Interest Meeting
5:30pm • Michigan State University Fisheries and Wildlife Alumni and Friends Social

2025 Midwest Fish & Wildlife Conference

Anheuser-Busch Brewery

TBA