The Mills lab takes the Montana Wildlife Society conference by storm!

Graphic of the presenation slide covers presented at the annual Montana Wildlife Society Conference

Last week on February 28 and March 1 in Helena MT, the Mills lab took the annual Montana Wildlife Society Conference by storm (despite an actual raging blizzard outside!) with four individual presentations on weasels, snowshoe hares, cougars and Asian elephants.

PhD Candidate Alex Kumar was the first of us to present, giving an oral presentation on "Short-term Responses of Snowshoe Hares to Western Larch Restoration and Seasonal Needle Drop."  Alex was immediately followed by MS Candidate Brandon Davis, who presented some of thesis work, "Weasely Recognized or Stoatally Camouflaged:  Quantifying Coat Color of a Cryptic Predator." 

That afternoon, PhD candidate Jen Feltner gave a poster presentation of some of her PhD research in progress, "Assessing the Impacts of Increasing Wolf and Grizzly Bear Populations on the Habitat Selection and Foraging Patterns of Cougars."   Later that evening at the awards banquet Jen was thrilled to learn she had been awarded the Best Graduate Student Poster Award for her poster.

Following an evening (and early morning!) of networking with state and federal agency biologists and socializing with our fellow University of Montana wildlife biology grad students and professors, it was Scott's turn to steal the show with the final talk of the conference, "Elephant Friendly Tea: An Example of Wildlife Science-based Commercialization to Save an Endangered Species."  His talk highlighted the work that Scott and his wife and Mills lab collaborator Lisa Mills have done with elephant conservation efforts in India.

All in all it was a very productive conference for the Mills lab, and we were also excited to survive another snow-filled drive back to Missoula!