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.

November saw the publication of new research from the WildCo lab which suggests restoring habitat may not be enough to save threatened woodland caribou—an iconic animal that’s a major part of boreal forests in North America and a key part of the culture and economy of many Indigenous peoples in Canada. Erin Tattersall, a recently graduated Masters student from the lab, showed that habitat restoration of seismic lines (narrow strips of land cleared to make way for oil and gas exploration) was ineffective in the short-term in reducing overlap between caribou and their predators/competitors. Check out the graphical summary below, and the full paper at Biological Conservation.