Muddy Boots is our internal blog where our staff members share experiences getting their boots muddy with on-the-ground conservation research! You can find our contributions to external blogs and Op Eds here.

Connecting with Rivers: Reflections from Moose Cree Youth Ocean Skye Phillips

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Connecting with Rivers: Reflections from Moose Cree Youth Ocean Skye Phillips
(September 19, 2023) Written by Ocean Skye Phillips, Moose Cree Youth. Ocean Skye Phillips in the field. Photo: WCS Canada  My name is Ocean Phillips. I’m a 20-year-old Moose Cree youth, living in Kapuskasing Ontario. In 2019, I had a chance to join Wildlife Conservation Society Canada (WCSC) scientists and staff from the Moose Cree First Nation Resource Protection Unit (MCFN) to study lake sturgeon in the Moose River watershed in the far north of Ontario.    But then COVID happen...

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Making a Home in a Disturbed Landscape

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Making a Home in a Disturbed Landscape
(August 03, 2023) Written by Clara Reid, Avian Field Intern, and Chris Coxson, Avian Field Technician, both with the Northern Boreal Mountains Program based in Whitehorse, Yukon.  Yellow Warbler, found in shrubby habitats in unmined areas and revegetated placer mines. Photo: Chris Coxson  The word “mining” brings certain images to mind: noisy and large machinery, piles of rocks and overturned trees, and stripped away vegetation. These may seem like hostile conditions for wildlif...

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Burning trees: not a good way to solve the climate crisis

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Burning trees: not a good way to solve the climate crisis
(August 01, 2023) By Donald Reid and Hilary Cooke  For several years, Wildlife Conservation Society Canada scientists based in Yukon have been drawing attention to the ecological and climate impacts of the Yukon Government’s proposed expansion of using wood (aka biomass) to fuel boilers to heat large buildings in Whitehorse and other communities. In June 2023, we submitted the following Letter to Yukon News in response to Yukon economist’s Keith Halliday’s analysis of biomass impacts on ...

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Next steps for Canada: Developing a plan to end biodiversity loss

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Next steps for Canada: Developing a plan to end biodiversity loss
(May 31, 2023) By Justina Ray Bighorn sheep in the Canadian Rockies. Photo by Richard Paksi (Canva Pro). Helping steer 196 countries to arrive at a consensus agreement for “halting and reversing biodiversity loss” was no small accomplishment for Canadian representatives at the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) negotiations in Montreal this past December.  But now the even more challenging work of implementing the agreement has begun with the official launch on May 15th of Canada&...

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Big Boots to Fill: The remarkable WCS Canada career of Dr. Don Reid

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Big Boots to Fill: The remarkable WCS Canada career of Dr. Don Reid
(May 01, 2023) By Hilary Cooke, Chrystal Mantyka-Pringle and Justina Ray Don Reid in the field trapping an Arctic lemming. Photo: WCS Canada. When Dr. Don Reid set up shop in Whitehorse, Yukon in 2004 as the founding member of what would grow to become WCS Canada’s Northern Boreal Mountains team, this versatile -- and well-versed -- scientist also brought an expert knowledge of the wildlife and wild places of one of Canada’s most globally important areas – the wild region spanning C...

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Worth the wait: Encountering bowhead whales in Canada’s Arctic

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Worth the wait: Encountering bowhead whales in Canada’s Arctic
(March 20, 2023) By Morgan J. Martin,  WCS Canada postdoc at the University of Victoria in collaboration with the Wildlife Conservation Society Canada working on behavioral responses of bowhead whales to shipping noise. The pandemic kept me grounded for two years, the research conditions were challenging, but when I finally did make it to Igloolik in Nunavut, it was an experience I will never forget. When I started a three-year postdoctoral researcher position at WCS Canada in June 2020, I was su...

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A Bake Sale for Wildlife!

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A Bake Sale for Wildlife!
(March 08, 2023) On a late summer afternoon in Whitehorse, Hilary Cooke was sorting through the mail not really looking for anything in particular, when she came across an interesting hand written letter. It isn’t too often that we receive hand written letters, and almost never coming from a community school. She opened it diligently, and inside to her surprise she found a hand written cheque addressed to the Wildlife Conservation Society Canada for $450 addressed by St. Elias Community School in Haines Ju...

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A powerful new approach to nature conservation in Canada

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A powerful new approach to nature conservation in Canada
(October 03, 2022) by Lina Cordero, Conservation Communications Intern, Wildlife Conservation Society Canada Canada is a big place. There are tens of thousands of lakes in this country, including some of the largest in the world. It is home to forests with a combined area larger than India and has the world’s longest coastline at more than 200,000 kilometres, including along the Pacific, Atlantic and Arctic oceans. This much space means Canada is blessed with a huge abundance and richness of natu...

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WCS Canada comments on Canada's Critical Minerals Strategy, to Natural Resources Canada

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WCS Canada comments on Canada's Critical Minerals Strategy, to Natural Resources Canada
(September 23, 2022) By Justina Ray, President and Senior Scientist at WCS Canada The federal government’s draft Critical Minerals Strategy is structured around colonial ‘new frontiers’ mindset that leads to a focus on expediting extraction instead of understanding the real consequences of opening up some of the world’s last remaining ecologically intact areas and carbon-rich stores to industrial development. Map from Canada’s critical minerals strategy: Discussion paper Ou...

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Learning from the biggest and smallest animals in the river

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Learning from the biggest and smallest animals in the river
(August 18, 2022) Most of our research is on the biggest animals in the river — the lake sturgeon — because they are important to Moose Cree, and because they can teach us a lot about the health of the river. Lake sturgeon are big, long-lived, and migratory, and so they need intact rivers to thrive. Seeing healthy populations of giant lake sturgeon tells us that the overall river is also healthy. However some of the smallest animals in the river can also tell us a lot about the health of the river....

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Photo credits: Banner | Lila Tauzer © WCS Canada