Donald Reid
Emeritus Scientist
Northern Boreal MountainsDon Reid retired from active duty with WCS Canada in May 2023, but remains affiliated as an adviser and while he publishes various scientific and policy investigations. Don led the Northern Boreal Mountains landscape program in northwest Canada (based out of Whitehorse, Yukon) from WCS Canada’s inception in 2004. With MSc (University of Calgary) and PhD (University of British Columbia) degrees, he spent about half his working life as a wildlife biologist with WCS, first as a contractor with WCS Global on the giant panda conservation program in Sichuan, China (1985-88), and later with WCS Canada.
In northwest Canada, Don led WCS Canada’s involvement in strategic land use planning and establishment of new protected areas (Peel Watershed and Dawson Region planning), research on the influence of climate change on Arctic terrestrial ecology (International Polar Year 2006-2010, and Arctic Biodiversity Assessment), policy debates on environmental impacts of energy (large-scale hydro, and biomass) developments, conservation of wildlife on agricultural lands, lake conservation, and planning for impacts of climate change on ecosystems.
His WCS field research in boreal Yukon has focused on river otters as indicators of aquatic ecosystem health, beavers as agents of change in riparian ecosystems, and spatial scale of forest disturbance as an influence on food webs where snowshoe hares are the dominant trophic species. He is currently exploring the origins and philosophical/cultural basis of the colonial-materialist world view so as to better understand its dramatic and sinister inability to provide a sustainable future for humans and Nature, and search for remedies.
Stories and op-eds
Burning trees: not a good way to solve the climate crisis
Letter to Yukon News: re Biomass for Institutional HeatingDonald Reid, Hilary Cooke
It’s a boom-and-bust world for snowy owls
Snowy owls are one of the most recognizable of Arctic birds.Donald Reid
Social for science: Using smartphone photos for research
With millions of photos taken globally each day on smartphones, researchers have found they may also contain important ecological clues about our rapidly changing planetDonald Reid
