Biodiversity Information Serving Our Nation (BISON) is a new activity in Core Science Systems in the United States Geological Survey.  We are currently developing the BISON project as an integrated resource for biological occurrence data from the United States. BISON will leverage USGS assets such as the full mirror and US Node for the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), as well as the accumulated human and infrastructure resources of the Survey’s significant and long-term investment in research and data management and delivery especially in biological and geospatial data. In this presentation there will be an overview of current capabilities in the prototype and a report from a requirements workshop with more than 100 participants held at USGS headquarters in Reston Sept. 27-29, 2011.