HLP_2017_09_dave-andison-portrait.jpg By Dave Andison The Healthy Landscapes Program (HLP) just published Quicknote #50. The milestone made me a bit nostalgic, and Terri thought it might be an opportunity to reflect on how the HLP changed since the first one came out. Back in the spring of 2000 – exactly 20 years ago – fRI Research was still in Phase I of the Foothills Model Forest, the HLP was known as the Natural Disturbance Program (NDP),…

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GBP_2020_03_Gord-recent-resize.jpg By Gord Stenhouse Friday was Terry's last day with the Grizzly Bear Program; his next adventure is with Parks Canada. When you work with someone for many years, especially doing field work, there are always a few stories that will be forever woven into the fabric of one’s memory. I have many great memories of time in the field with Terry catching bears and travelling throughout most of Alberta’s grizzly bear range together. I…

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From Keith McClain I was deeply saddened to hear of the death of Jim LeLacheur. He was West Fraser’s Chief Forester for Alberta and, from 2004 until 2010, the second President of our organization. During my tenure with the Department of Sustainable Resource Development within the Alberta Government I had a unique opportunity and privilege to meet many interesting people. One of these individuals was Jim LeLacheur, who at the time, sat on the Board…

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Leonie Brown likes to solve problems. The whole time we talked, she was busily assembling a shelf to store the winter gear that had come back from camp and was currently jumbled on the floors of offices, sea cans, and back rooms. The crew had just returned from their remote winter camp up northwest of Grande Cache capturing and collaring deer. By all measures, it was a successful campaign. Every GPS collar the Caribou Program…

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Living in a remote camp in the winter, enduring long days in cold temperatures, and ultimately, tackling deer might not appeal to everyone, but it’s what Erin Tattersall calls, “the good life.” Erin is the new Caribou Program Research Assistant, partly funded by a Career Launcher Clean Tech Internship. She joins a team that is trying to figure out which characteristics of cutblocks are attractive or unattractive to moose, deer, and elk. The idea is…

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By Ryan Tew Like any good field tour day, it started early on a sunny and soon to be very hot (30°C) and smoky day in Peace River. The group gathered for a 7:30 am departure for the EMEND (Ecosystem-based Management Emulating Natural Disturbance) field camp, where introductions were made, partner perspectives were shared (fRI Research has supported EMEND since its inception, 22–23 years ago), overviews provided, and safety briefings given. The group again gathered,…

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By Siobhan Darlington This winter fRI Research’s Caribou Program was catching white-tailed deer near the Little Smoky and A la Peche Caribou ranges as part of the Deer and Cutblocks Project. We fit them with collars that emit GPS locations every hour. These points allow us to track their movements for up to two years—but what happens when those points stop moving unexpectedly early? We become death scene investigators. White-tailed deer in this industrially-active region…

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By Dan Wismer, GIS Analyst A good part of GIS work requires large landscape datasets to be filtered, processed and summarized into meaningful co-variates for statistical modeling and mapping. Measuring feature lengths, areas and counts is what GIS is good for but can be challenging when calculations need to be captured annually, over large areas and on large time-stamped datasets. For example, generating annual road densities within thousands of overlapping buffered grizzly bear GPS boundaries…

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Catching deer in the boreal forest is hard. It just isn't feasible to try to just search by snowshoe, truck, or even helicopter because of the vast tracts of wilderness and dense tree cover. But we want to fit 20 with GPS collars so we can track their movement for our cutblock project. So, ever since we rang in 2019, we've been in the field setting up bait sites and building traps. When a hungry…

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For 2019’s Women in Science Day, wildlife biologist Siobhan Darlington shares how she got into science, what the job is like, and what advice she would give other women considering a similar career. By Siobhan Darlington I didn’t excel at biology in high school but I knew that I was interested in making a difference in the environment and I was interested in animals. I did a double major in Biology and Environmental Sustainability, &…

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