(September 21, 2018) One of the reasons that I like fieldwork is that it always involves learning new skills, and often these are obscure skills that I never expected I would need in my career as a biologist. As an example, this summer I found myself sitting on a grassy riverbank near the shores of James Bay, wearing my full rain gear on a sunny day as protection against the relentless blackflies, learning to splice rope. Splicing rope involves braiding strands of rope together to join two ropes or to form a loop at...

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(July 16, 2018) You hear them long before you see them: a raspy, gurgling call builds on the horizon. Sandhill cranes. Hundreds, even thousands, flying in endless branching formations or circling on a rising thermal. Over a period of less than two weeks in early May, an estimated 250,000 will follow Yukon’s Tintina Trench, traveling from wintering sites in the southern U.S. toward breeding sites in western Alaska and Siberia.     Sandhill cranes (Grus canadensis) migrate in large ...

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(July 06, 2018) Did you know that the majority of the roughly 4,000 North American bee species live alone, can’t sting you, and nest in the ground?It is more than likely that you have crossed paths with a bee already this summer. They are everywhere, but many of them don’t look anything like the classic black-and-yellow bee on your bottle of honey or box of Cheerios. Some are much larger and more colourful. Many are similar in size to flies and lack distinctive colouration. Others are the size of a ...

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(May 11, 2018) By: Hilary Cooke It’s our fourth week monitoring spring migration in Yukon’s Tintina Trench. Since mid-April we’ve been travelling between Watson Lake in southeast Yukon to Faro in the heart of the Trench, tracking the migration of swans, geese, ducks, and cranes.  Sandhill cranes and the smaller snow geese migrating through Yukon’s Tintina Trench in spring. Credit Hilary CookeIt’s been a slow spring – by early May the lakes were still frozen, t...

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(March 05, 2018) By: Rosana SoaresMy journey to becoming a wildlife conservation biologist did not follow a long-planned career path – it was really something I stumbled into.  But that “stumble” is what led me to the Amazon, and to where I am today.   Ever since I was young I have been fascinated by all things animal. And while I always imagined I’d have a career dedicated to helping animals, I thought my only career option was to become a veterinarian, which for me w...

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(February 21, 2018) By: Cheryl Chetkiewicz Between 1962 and 1970, the Reed International pulp mill company dumped 10 tonnes of mercury into the English-Wabigoon River watershed at the mill site in Dryden. Downstream from Dryden, people in the community of Asubpeeschoseewagong—known to settlers as Grassy Narrows First Nation—have been living with, and dying from, the impacts of this potent neurotoxin.   In addition to mercury accumulating in the freshwater fish that are a vital part of the cult...

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(February 16, 2018) By: Justina Ray and Cheryl Chetkiewicz   The federal government tabled a much anticipated new bill called the Impact Assessment Act last week. This act replaces the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act (CEAA 2012) as part of a process the government announced 18 months ago with the stated goals of restoring public trust, making decisions based on evidence, advancing reconciliation with Indigenous peoples, and simultaneously ensuring good projects get built. A particula...

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(January 08, 2018) By: Dr. Sherman Boates, WCS Canada Board of Directors   It is the ‘muddy boots” part of science that first got me and many of my WCS Canada colleagues hooked on wildlife and the environment.  As a child, I was a nature nerd, captivated for hours on summer days, playing in a stream or pond, catching and observing fish, amphibians and invertebrates. I also recall the relentless hooting of barred owls as I sat by a late winter campfire in a back-country sugar maple forest...

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(November 06, 2017) By: Justina Ray Following right on the heels of Halloween, the federal government has released a very scary report on how caribou are faring across Canada.   Five years ago, the federal government finalized a recovery strategy for boreal forest caribou -- work that was triggered by the listing of caribou as threatened under the federal Species at Risk Act (SARA).   This recovery strategy broke new ground.  Rather than just designating specific areas as “critical habitat,&rd...

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(September 07, 2017) Amazon wants to use them to deliver you packages, but for a wildlife conservation organization, drones (also called Unmanned Aerial Vehicle  - UAVs) are a great new tool for getting a better picture of some pretty remote places. In the past, if we wanted to get a sense of the habitat found over a large area, we might have used satellite imagery.  We still do use such imagery, but satellites have some limitations.  For example, a satellite may only pass over an area once every two ...

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