Wildlife agencies in Canada and the U.S face a predicament. Migratory Canada geese, which fly to arctic regions every summer to breed, require conservation protection. However, resident Canada geese, which breed in southern Canada and the U.S., often within city limits, are experiencing seemingly out of control population growth. These migratory and resident populations co-mingle during the non-breeding season. In Ontario, and across North America, hunting regulations have been modified by wildlife services to permit hunting before (early September) and after (late February) the traditional waterfowl hunting period. The idea has been that by allowing hunting during ‘special’ seasons, resident Canada geese would be targeted for harvest, whereas migrant Canada geese would be largely spared. In a recently published study in the Journal of Wildlife Management, Sam Iverson (a PhD student at Carleton) and his co-authors evaluated how effective this approach has been. We found that while survival rates of resident population breeding adults have been reduced in association with changes to hunting regulations, a disproportionate amount of the harvest is now falling on reproductively immature Canada geese and other geese unaffiliated with Ontario’s local breeding population. Total Canada goose harvest has more than doubled in the province since the 1990s; however, the increase in harvest has not kept pace with population growth. Most of the additional harvest is occurring during the special early season. Although early season hunting has proven to be a good strategy for minimizing impact on migrant Canada geese it has been less effective than desired for controlling resident Canada goose population growth because most of the harvest pressure has fallen on individuals of low reproductive value.
Paper: Iverson, S. A., Reed, E. T., Hughes, R. J. and Forbes, M. R. (2013), Age and breeding stage-related variation in the survival and harvest of temperate-breeding Canada geese in Ontario. The Journal of Wildlife Management. doi: 10.1002/jwmg.636 Link: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jwmg.636/abstract
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I would venture to guess many of us have witnessed a cat with a dying songbird. Nature’s red domestic. But have we stopped long enough to think about the extent to which our house pets are responsible for declines of songbird populations? What other human activities reduce populations of songbirds and other birds from our (sub)urban and natural landscapes and our agro-ecosystems? There are many such direct sources of mortality including pesticide ingestion, destruction of nest or nesting hens by farm and forestry machinery, hunting the birds themselves, collisions with automobiles, buildings and cell phone towers or windmills and slicking from oil spills. But what are their single and combined impacts? Paul Smith, a research scientist recently hired at the National Widlife Research Centre, has recently been a guest editor, along with Travis Longcore, of an important series of contributed papers on this theme, in the journal Avian Conservation and Ecology.
Worldwide, scientists are being asked to become better communicators. Wildlife research presents a unique opportunity for science communication in northern communities. Between 2007 and 2011, Environment Canada and Carleton University partnered with the Nunavut Arctic College and other agencies to provide a learning opportunity that integrated marine bird research in the territory with local traditional knowledge and the training of students. Over the course of the project, both the researchers and the educators refined the program through lessons learned including the mismatch between researcher programs and education program timing; the need for dedicated funding and time for development of the program; and, the need for adequate space and infrastructure support. This program is just one way in which northern research can integrate the needs of the local community and involve northern residents. This is an important step in enhancing long term capacity in the north. More on this unique partnership program and further developments can be found by visiting Jennifer Provencher's website. Jenn is a PhD student co-supervised with Grant Gilchrist at NWRC.
The Health, Science, Technology and Policy graduate program at Carleton hosted its first evening public lecture this year, just yesterday (Sept 19th). Dr. Felicia Wu, the John A. Hannah Distinguished Professor of Food Science and Human Nutrition at Michigan State University, delivered a very exciting and interesting lecture entitled: “Improving food safety: what we can learn from public health and control of infectious diseases.” The purpose of Dr. Wu’s visit to Ottawa was twofold. She was also part of a very successful Joint Special Meeting of The Toxicology Forum & Regulatory Governance Initiative, entitled: “Mycotoxins – unavoidable natural contaminants in staple crops: Public health and international trade.”
Nowadays, citations rates are far from simple. When I was gearing up in my research career, there were many fewer journals in one’s field. The graduate students and PDFs all aspired to get published in those journals that were high impact journals. Then it became clear that even papers in lower-impact journals could themselves have high, often very high, citation rates. It was really about the quality of the research. You heard ‘lab legends’ of bad papers being cited frequently as how ‘not’ to do something; but these papers just tend to be forgotten. When one points out obvious flaws of inference, logic and/or design in a study, there is really no need to revisit it, else one is accused of building straw men. We also have heard that citations are not everything; and indeed, they aren’t. Citation rates can be discipline specific and subject to bandwagons. But, they are still a useful metric.
Jennifer Provencher, a PhD student, co-supervised by myself and Grant Gilchrist (NWRC), went to a workshop that was sponsored by the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program (AMAP) which is a working group of the Arctic Council. The workshop was in Saint Petersburg Russia from April 22-24. The meeting was themed “Action Adaptations for a Changing Arctic (AACA-C)”. The meeting’s purpose was to bring together climate model scientists, natural scientists, especially those with a marine focus, and others stakeholders (Governments, oil and gas producers etc.) to discuss the feasibility of strategies to maintain valued areas under projected climate change scenarios. The workshop focussed on three pilot regions (Barents Sea, Davis Strait-Baffin Bay, and the Beaufort-Chukchi-Bering Sea). All climate models predict moderate changes over the next 30 years regardless of scenarios and actions taken today, but show that strategies taken today on limiting carbon emissions over the next 80 years might greatly change how the planet will look. The report from the meeting goes back to the Arctic Council at its May ministerial meeting for final approval for the project to go ahead.
For the past three months and for the next three months, the Forbes’ Lab is hosting two researchers from CNRS Montpellier France. Dr. Karen McCoy is a molecular ecologist and evolutionary biologist who specializes in local host adaptation of seabird ticks and its influence on Lymes bacteria transmission. Dr. Thierry Boulinier is interested in maternal transfer of antibodies to seabird chicks and is also studying disease outbreaks in colonies of polar seabirds, most notably albatrosses. The Forbes’ lab also hosted a seminar in late January by Dr. Alex Cordoba-Aguilar, Departamento de Ecologĺa Evolutiva, Instituto de Ecología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. His talk was entitled “On the functional ecology of wing pigmentation: a case study in insects”.
Some time ago, a group of colleagues and myself were hosted at University of Toronto’s Koffler Scientific Reserve to discuss, among other things, the future of Canadian Field Stations (mostly University-based field
A sketch of an unidentified damselfly with larval water mites engorging on its wings. The picture was drawn by one of my former students, Kathyrn Norman, and was sketched from a photograph taken in
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