The Annual General Meeting for the Australian Rangeland Society was held via Zoom on Wednesday 26 May, 2021 with 17 members present.
Two major matters of business were carried out during the meeting:
- The ARS Financial Report (including the Director’s Report) for 2020 was presented. Highlights for the Society in 2020 include:
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- The bid by the ARS to hold the 2025 International Rangeland Congress in Adelaide, South Australia was successful
- The output from the Society’s publications continued to be strong with 5 issues of the Rangeland Journal and 3 Range Management Newsletters published through the year and a steady increase in social media interactions. The change to open-access publishing of the newsletter in December 2020 to encourage wider readership and promote the Society
- Continued support the concept of an International Year of Rangeland and Pastoralists
- Careful management of the Society’s resources resulted in only a small financial loss for the year. This result is expected in a non-Conference year.
- Council elections were also held. Following the expiration of his term on the ARS Council, David Phelps stood down from role of President and Dionne Walsh was subsequently elected unopposed. Thanks to David for his hard work over the last 8 years and congratulations to Dionne on her appointment. David will continue as an ex-officio board member until after the Longreach ARS Conference. Pieter Conradie was elected to Council. Pieter is from Queensland. The appointment of two new Council members Paul Erkelenz (South Australia) and Matt Fletcher (Western Australia) in September 2020 was also acknowledged during the meeting. You can find out more about Dionne, Paul, Matt and Pieter on the Council page on the website.
For those that are interested, the full ARS Financial Report for 2020 can be viewed here. Don Burnside has also provided a summary financial report which can be viewed next.