Grant: Canada Research Chairs

Across the Earth, human modification of the environment has never been so widespread as it is today. As a result, many populations of Canada’s most recognizable wildlife—caribou, elk, deer, wolves, bears—are declining. These declines are occurring because people have altered the types of interactions that occur between species: the links in the food chain are broken. To counter these impacts, wildlife restoration ecology has emerged as a significant new discipline in the life sciences. Restoration also forms the backbone of environmental legislation in Canada. If restoration is to succeed, scientists must develop and translate knowledge of how people affect species interactions and ecological processes. The objective of this Tier II Canada Research Chair (CRC) in Wildlife Restoration Ecology are to address the impact of human activity on the interactions among people, large predators (wolves, bears, cougars), their prey (deer, elk), and plants in human-modified landscapes. The approach of this CRC program features a novel combination of field experiments, GPS tracking, and satellite imagery to bring together the ecology of individuals, populations, and communities. Specifically, the Chair will investigate how natural resource extraction, infrastructure, and human-wildlife conflict not only change species abundance, but the manner in which these species move through the landscape and interact with one another. The Chair is positioned at the forefront of efforts to restore wildlife populations and the people that depend on wildlife for food security and cultural purposes. The implications of this research are significant for Canada’s international commitments to conserve biodiversity and to support human-wildlife interactions that often are at the center of reconciliation efforts between national governments and Indigenous communities.