Adventures Afield for the UBCO TWS Student Chapter

This year, the Canadian Section and the Alberta Chapter of the Wildlife Society held a joint conference in the beautiful town of Canmore in Alberta’s Bow Valley from March 22nd-24th. This conference was a great opportunity to share UBCO’s research and give some UBCO Chapter student members a taste of what a large conference is like. A large UBCO cohort attended, including 4 UBCO Chapter Execs, two undergraduate students (who were fully funded by UBC Tuum Est), our trusty Faculty Advisor, Dr. Adam Ford, and our external advisor, Dr. Garth Mowat. We all made the trek up the long, winding, mountainous highway to the town of Canmore, nestled on the eastern slopes of the rugged Rocky Mountains with high hopes.

One of the first events was a snowtracking (i.e. animal markings ID) and telemetry (i.e. tracking radio and GPS collars) workshop. A few of us joined the group and headed out to a local park to trudge around the melting snow looking for tiny black transmitters from radiocollars. While we came out with wet feet, we also felt our telemetry skills were much improved after chasing signals that bounced off the surrounding snow-covered mountain peaks. We also did a bit of hiking to look for animal tracks and even though the snow was melting, the snowtracking expert explained how to age tracks by using snow texture and the angle of sunlight and how to find small mammal travel corridors under our very feet! We walked away with some more field skills and a lot of new student friends. 😊

The rest of the weekend was full of elation and education: running into old colleagues and undergraduate partners-in-crime, nerding out on your niche research topic with other academics who understand your passion, and gabbing the night away at a local bar, with students and faculty (who shall remain nameless) tearing up the dance floor until the wee hours of the morning.

A few us had to take it easy on the merriment and prepare for our talks and poster presentations. Adam gave an illuminating talk on the Conference’s theme, ‘Connectivity’, during the opening Plenary. Emily Sunter and Sultana Majid, outgoing UBCO TWS Execs, regaled their respective audiences with some exciting preliminary results from their MSc research. Finally, the rest of the UBCO crew killed it the whole weekend expanding their networks, practicing their science-y small-talk, and taking full advantage of the delicious conference buffets (seriously, that food was amazing; tasty bread rolls for days).

Another highlight of the weekend was celebrating 30 years of women in wildlife. Ecology giants, such as Evelyn Merrill and Wini Kessler, shared their insight and wisdom from their illustrious careers with wildlife and told us how proud they were to be at a conference with more than 50% women in attendance (this is in stark contrast to the early days of TWS). We also heard from Margo Pybus, the Alberta Provincial Wildlife Disease Specialist, who reminded us to chase our dreams with tenacity; and Sonja Leverkus, an ecosystem scientist who started her own consulting company and encouraged us to take on leadership positions; and Janet Ng, a hawk loving wildlife biologist who uses her online presence to break down racial stereotypes, inspire youngsters, and build her network; and Melanie Dickie, Coordinator of the ABMI’s Caribou Monitoring Unit who reminded us to not limit ourselves and surround ourselves with supportive people, including women, of course!

By attending the Canadian Section and the Alberta Chapter of the Wildlife Society joint conference, we were provided the opportunity to not only network with academics and potential future employers, but to also become more knowledgeable in current wildlife research in our country. Through discussions with an array of individuals from within the wildlife biology field, our knowledge of what it means to be a biologist has expanded exponentially and has opened new doors to the potential we will have within this field. We are truly grateful to have been provided the opportunity to attend this conference and hope to see all of the familiar faces again in the near future!