February saw the inaugural WildCo retreat! The team headed over to the beautiful Lake Cowichan for two days of science, fun, and eating…. in that order. The first night involved a discussion of big issues in conservation biology and how our work informs them. On Saturday, we took a deep dive into understanding how to quantify animal behaviours from camera trap footage – watch this space for a future paper on the topic!

This week brings not one but two publications fresh out of the WildCo lab:

• A paper exploring the co-occurrence patterns of predators along seismic lines in northern Alberta in Ecology and Evolution. The paper represents the second chapter published from Erin Tattersall’s MSc thesis. Congratulations Erin et al.
• A paper addressing the trade-offs between timber extraction and woodland caribou habitat conservation across their range in the Canadian Journal of Forest Research. Lead by Denys Yemshanov, this work represents a collaboration between Cole Burton at UBC and colleagues in the Canadian Forest Service, USDA Forest Service and Lakehead University.

At this rate 2020 looks set to be a very productive year for the lab!

We are excited to announce the arrival of two new researchers to the WildCo lab – Alys and Tom. Alys joins us all the way from the UBC zoology department where she recently completed her PhD on the impacts of logging and hunting on mammals in Malaysian Borneo. She will be getting to work on the data from the BC-wide camera trap network, WildCAM, over the next few months. Tom is a third year biology student at UBC who will be working with Cat on the measurement of plant phenology using remote camera traps. Check out their full profiles on the People page.