Lockdown Wildco!
The WildCo team is currently working from home, but we still meet remotely to collaborate and learn more about each other’s projects and ideas! Hopefully, while we are lockdown, the wild animals are running riot on our trail cameras… only time will tell!
WildCo Retreat 2020
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 […]
WildCo papers x 2
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 […]
New lab members: Alys and Tom
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 […]
New Paper: Responses to Caribou Habitat Restoration
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 […]
Caribou, Communities, and Keeping the Peace
By Erin Tattersall A human-wildlife conflict is simmering in the Peace River Region in northeastern British Columbia. On March 21, the BC government released a draft Partnership Agreement for the recovery of the Central Group of southern mountain caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou). The draft outlines immediate actions to protect the six caribou herds in the […]
Of Mice and Moose: Five lessons and learnings from the start of grad school
By Alexia Constantinou 1. The past six months have been an exciting roller coaster of the birth of a new wildlife research project: my master’s thesis. I began my MSc in September of 2018, as a co-supervised student between Cole Burton (Wildlife Coexistence Lab) and Suzanne Simard (Belowground Ecology Group). My work focuses on how […]
Remote cameras for studying animals or plants: why not both?
By: Taylor Justason With one of WildCo’s main study tools being the camera trap, readers of this blog have probably gathered that the use of remote cameras to study the natural world is rapidly increasing in popularity. Remotely-triggered cameras for detecting wildlife have been in use almost as long as the camera has been around: […]
Richardson Caribou Range – A Tale of Two Disturbances
By Joanna Burgar Descending into our study area in the Richardson backcountry, almost exactly halfway between Fort McMurray and Fort Chipewyan in north-eastern Alberta, stirs up a mix of emotions. Our study area lies within Canada’s magnificent boreal forest —a fire dominated landscape comprising burned and unburned patches of upland jack pine (Pinus banksiana) and […]
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 […]