Ohio 2024

Meeting Organizer: Dave McShaffrey

How did we end up in Ohio?

Well, in 2001, Jen Wykle contacted me asking for help on assembling a dragonfly list for West Virginia. Bob Glotzhober and I were able to connect her with others such as Nick Donnelly and she soon had a rudimentary but dated list. The idea came up to have a DSA meeting in West Virginia and this took place in 2002. As part of the after-meeting trips the group came to Williamstown WV, across the river from Marietta, to board USFWS craft to go out to one of the Ohio River Islands National Wildlife Refuge islands, and I pointed out Marietta to Jerrell Daigle. He asked me if there was a good Mexican Restaurant there; I said yes, and ever since he has been hounding me to have a meeting here.

For a long time I resisted the idea, simply because I could not see the attraction of Marietta in terms of the odonate fauna. Why would anyone come here to see all this common stuff? My thinking on this changed in 2016 when the Ohio Odonata Society invited Kurt Mead to keynote our annual meeting. On one of our field trips, Kurt called me over with some excitement – “Dave, is this what I think it is?” I confirmed that it was in fact Ischnura posita and Kurt had a lifer. This was a paradigm change for me; Fragile Forktails are officially our 4th most commonly observed species and given their size and secretive ways are probably the most abundant species in the state. A lifer for someone 2 states away, and at that a someone who is a pretty darn good Odontologist and author of a great field guide.

At the 2018 meeting in Minnesota Jarrell brought it up again and I said yes; plans were made for 2021 after Oklahoma.

Covid.

And here we are.