Another WildCo year has kicked off!

It’s hard to believe that summer has flown by, but here we are starting another academic year! A sure sign of the changing season is the new student orientations at UBC, such as the Forestry JumpStart tours that stopped by the Wildlife Coexistence lab to learn about our wildlife research projects from Joanna KvB and Aisha (pictured).

What a summer it was, packed with conferences, field work, and other “science-ing”. New data from camera traps and other surveys are now rolling in, from Sri Lanka to Sooke (Vancouver Island) to the Little Smoky (Alberta), and we’re sharpening our analytical ideas in anticipation. Including new ideas on animal movement modelling garnered from workshops attended by Erin (at UBC) and Jo (at St. Andrews in Scotland). Jo presented her latest Bayesian density models to top biostatisticians at the International Statistical Ecology Conference (Scotland), Cheng presented his MSc research on park effectiveness at the Association for Tropical Biology & Conservation (Malaysia), and Cole talked about species distribution models and white-tailed deer dynamics at the Canadian Society for Ecology & Evolution (Guelph) and North American Congress for Conservation Biology (Toronto).

We had a great time getting to know visiting Queen Elizabeth Scholar Meghna Bandyopadhyay, from the Wildlife Institute of India, who taught us about carnivores and camera trapping in the Indian Himalayas. And there were many other events and accomplishments this summer, including Cole’s first trip to Peru with Francis and Cindy, a new paper on Armenian brown bears, the cover article in Frontiers in Ecology & the Environment, a workshop on species at risk legislation in BC, some media coverage of Joanna’s black bear surveys, another National Geographic grant (congrats Aisha!), and even a lab wedding (congrats Francis and Jonathan!).

We are excited for the fall, with more new projects starting (welcome Alexia and Robin!), a camera trap workshop coming up, and a packed semester of teaching and research in wildlife ecology and conservation!