An earlier-than-usual fall annual meeting ... prospects for lots of mosquitoes and nutria ... perhaps some snakes and alligators ... and certainly lots of heat and humidity ... along with the virtual certainty of lots of great restaurants, wide-ranging options on great jazz, camaraderie and what have become annual reunions among fellow reporters, a range of half-day and full-day field trips, the usual possibility of a September hurricane and, again, lots of heat and humidity.

Those factors –- and a smorgasbord of choices on substantive issues too -– are combining to shape this month's annual Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ) annual conference (September 10-14), along New Orleans' famed and infamous French Quarter.

A slower-than-usual advance registration rate has conference planners hoping, and somewhat expecting, a rush of late conference registrants, but despite the lure of New Orleans for many, it appeared unlikely that this year's total conference would match last fall's record 850-plus registrants in Baltimore.

Somewhere between 200 and 300 is a more likely range of active SEJ members likely to attend the SEJ meeting. Non-working-press members will boost that total registration, but the 850 record-high Baltimore registration appears unachievable.

Among the fare conference registrants will be sampling (again, we're not talking just good food and good vibrations/libations): critical coastal infrastructure and fisheries issues in the context of a region providing one-third of the country's oil and gas; the blessings and curses of coping daily with the nation's most famous, or most infamous "Chemical Corridor" or, as environmentalists prefer to label it, "Cancer Alley"; Mississippi River flows and the impacts on the Gulf of Mexico's perennial "Dead Zone"; the plight of Louisiana's quickly diminishing wetlands and challenges posed by coastal erosion, subsidence, dredging, levees and channelization projects, and plain old population pressures.

An early peek at President Bush's nominee for Environmental Protection Agency Administrator, Utah Governor Mike Leavitt, will be provided in a panel hosted by Seth Borenstein of Knight-Ridder, Washington, D.C., and including Judith Fahys of the Salt Lake City Tribune, the executive director of Utah's Department of Environmental Quality, and industry and public health protagonists.

SEJ's second round of environmental journalism awards and its election to fill expiring terms on its Board of Directors also will take place during the meeting.

Along with the by-now-to-be-expected and fully welcome "charge" and sense-of-community these SEJ annual conferences provide attendees, reporters and editors attending this year's New Orleans meeting are certain to notice somewhat higher registration fees -- some sessions routinely covered by general registration fees in the past (morning breakfast roundtables, for instance, and some evening events) now carry a separate fee.

Additional details and registration information for the SEJ annual conference are available online at SEJ's website.