The Alberta Chapter of the Wildlife Society hosted its annual conference last weekend in Lac La Biche from March 17 to 19 for the first time in the society’ s 27-year history.
The Alberta Chapter of the Wildlife Society hosted its annual conference last weekend in Lac La Biche from March 17 to 19 for the first time in the society’ s 27-year history.
The conference had several excursions to different areas that showcased subjects of interest ranging from owl banding to logging. The remaining two days of the conference were held at the Bold Center and Portage College and featured 60 presenters discussing various aspects of wildlife research. Topics ranged from the co-relation of the frequency of singing between male birds and their mating patterns, to how to detect black bear density in forests.
The society is a not-for-profit conservation organization and is also designed to appeal to professionals in conservation fields.
The chapter has 200 members, nearly all of which have expertise in the subject of wildlife and conservation. Everyone who spoke at the convention is a member of the organization.
“We have biologists from all over Alberta and B.C. who work in government, we have speakers from not-for-profits, we have speakers from the academic world,” said conference chairperson and Wildlife Society executive director Delinda Ryerson.
Ryerson also said that a lot of graduate students come to the event, which she sees as a particularly good sign.
She said that some of the speakers and partnerships come from the energy and logging sector, but they are not by any means opposed to the group’ s goals.
“We have people who work for Devon with us,” said Ryerson. “We have biologists from energy companies and we also worked with Al-Pac for the cut blocks.”
Cut blocks refer to the plots of land that foresters examine and then clear trees out of. One of the excursions that took place on the Friday of the conference was dedicated to this.
“They actually see it as being in their interest to know about good wildlife management and mitigating the environmental cost of their activities.”
The conference featured presentations on numerous subjects but always runs around a central theme, which this year was wildfire. Ryerson said this was part of the reason the conference was held in Lac La Biche this year.
“This is the first year we’ ve held our conference north of Edmonton,” she said. “Our new incoming president Everett Hanna is associated with Portage College, so that was a factor. But we also wanted to pay back Lac La Biche for the role they played in the Fort McMurray fire, and we saw this as a way of putting money back into their economy.”
The Alberta chapter is only one chapter of The Wildlife Society that exists in North America. The larger organization was founded in 1937.
