Education

PhD in Environmental Biology and Ecology, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alberta. January 2006. 

MA in Wildlife Biology, Wildlife Biology Program, University of Montana. December 2000. 

Bsc (Hons) in Biological Science in Pure and Applied Ecology. University of Guelph. 1995.

Research Interests

My research interests broadly lie in understanding 1) how wildlife such as ungulate herbivores balance the costs of predation with the benefits of foraging, and 2) how human activities influence this balance, and the ensuing conservation and management consequences to wildlife population dynamics. Ungulate habitat selection is a primary mechanism used to balance predation and forage, and my research uses new techniques to link the consequences of resource selection to population dynamics. My research approach is largely empirical, based on field studies, and makes use of advances in spatial and statistical modeling including resource selection functions, cox-proportional hazards survival analyses, and landscape simulation models using GIS. 
        

Because human activities often influence predation risk and forage distribution, I believe it is crucial for research to have applied conservation and management components. My research has been used for applied management issues in Banff and Jasper National Parks such as endangered caribou recovery, urban elk management, carnivore corridor restoration, intergrated carnivore-ungulate management, and trophic effects of habitat fragmentation. In adjacent provincial lands my research has been applied for ungulate harvest management, developing salvage logging guidelines for ungulates, and managing elk-hay conflicts. Previous work also provided a quantitative transboundary management framework for managing anthropogenic effects on ungulate populations that migrate across jurisdictional boundaries. I am especially interested in the conservation of migratory ungulates.

See my Google Scholar Profile here.

Examples of research I am presently involved with are:

1. Woodland caribou recovery in the Canadian Rockies and northern British Columbia.
2. Wolf-elk predator prey dynamics modeling and trophic dynamics.
3. Sierra Nevada Bighorn Sheep recovery and habitat relationships in the eastern Sierra Nevada.
4. Elk population dynamics in the Bitterroot valley of Montana and predator-prey dynamics.
5. Modeling survival of ungulates (mule deer, elk) across regional scales in the Pacific Northwest.
6. Modeling habitat for Amur tigers as a function of prey availability in the Russian far east, and understanding Bengal tiger ecology in Bhutan.

Ungulate Ecology Lab

Selected Publications

View my recent publications list on my lab web site

View my Google Scholar Profile