Focus on Fellows: Clayton Lamb

Q: So what sparked your interest in the subject?

CL: I was raised in an outdoors-oriented household. A lot of things I did with my dad were on the consumptive user end like hunting or fishing or getting food for the family. In that sense, you're essentially doing what an ecologist does all the time. You're trying to figure out where the animals are, where they’re most likely to be. Why are there not more of them in one spot? Essentially what a hunter tries to do is what scientists do all the time. I'm no better a hunter these days, but I certainly spend a lot more time at my computer!

Q: What would you say were the key findings from your PhD?

CL: We were able to show how grizzly bear density changes depending on disturbance from people and varying levels of habitat productivity. Our population estimate for the whole province of British Columbia put the total population around 14,000 grizzly bears, which is half the grizzly bears in all of Canada.

One of the key findings was around bears near people. In some areas, people feel like there's a ton of bears causing problems. From the human perspective, the bears are doing phenomenally well. We were able to show that while the locals are absolutely correct, in that the bear population is staying stable year over year, bears that are near people are actually dying at incredibly high rates.

The high mortality rate is not offset by reproduction, but it is offset by immigration. So while the overall population remains stable, there are consequences. Something is disproportionately sucking bears into populated zones. When we then remove the older “problem animals”, this brings in younger, more conflict-prone animals that are then more likely to die, creating a conflict and mortality spiral.

So the next step is how do we do something about that? How do we create a landscape of coexistence in which the world works for the bears, but not at costs to people? How can we strike a balance in which everyone can thrive on this landscape?

Q: Those are some big questions - tell me more about what that's starting to look like?

CL: The goal is to bring a bunch of different parties that are interested in the Elk Valley in Southeast British Columbia and do something on the ground that has measurable benefits for people and for wildlife.

That includes providing cost-share support, especially to rural people that are dealing with the reality of having grizzly bears on the landscape. We have experts that have installed over 500 electric fences for grizzly bears to support the people that want to secure their properties, but not have to bear the full financial burden of doing that.

Fruit trees is another one. There's quite a few folks that have legacy fruit trees on properties they’ve bought that they don’t want or can’t harvest. They don't necessarily want to cut it down, but they don't know what to do with it. So we pay to remove the trees and have a replacement tree brought in.

There's some really great replacement options that have beautiful spring flowers, fall leaves and all the benefits of that tree, but not the fruit that cause people to wake up at 3:00am and see a bear looking at them through their window!

Q: As someone working in the conservation field, how would you describe the conservation context in Canada right now?

CL: In recent times there’s been a real shift to Indigenous-led conservation. That's a major shift in the way that things are done in in Canada. A lot of my time now is spent working on caribou with West Moberly and Saulteau First Nations, which has quadrupled the abundance of an endangered caribou herd. That level of recovery was essentially unthinkable, but they’ve done it.

There haven’t historically been a lot of these Indigenous-led programs where the Nations are really leading the charge. But at the grassroots level and with the power of treaty rights, the First Nations and partners were able to do the impossible.

Q: So what are the biggest risks currently facing the ecosystems you’re working in?

CL: I think the biggest one is ambivalence towards action. It's so hard to get anything done. There's always an important role for science, but we also have a laundry list of actions that we could take to benefit the environment and to benefit people's well-being. Yet we struggle to action them.

There’s an asymmetry in how easy it is to disturb something or make something worse than it is to make it better. The system was set up to make the land economically viable for settlers at a time of perceived unlimited abundance. It was all about opening the floodgates of money and resources and development. It’s now well known that resources are not unlimited and that there are bounds that we need to start working within, but the system isn’t changing as rapidly as it probably needs to.

Resource extraction industries are making big money. There are billions of dollars leaving local areas and not making it onto the ground for wildlife or people.

The goal is not in any way to bankrupt these folks. But in the case where it's incredibly profitable to extract resources, even a few percent going back into the landscape would help balance the scales.

We're probably always going to need timber. Mining has huge impacts, but people still want their electric vehicles and their cellphones and things like that. So how do we act so that every impact we're having has an equal or greater benefit on the landscape so we can start making it better?

Q: With all that in mind, what gives you hope?

CL: I actually have a ton of hope which might be because I’ve selectively chosen a whole bunch of really hopeful projects to spend my time on. I have limited time and capacity and kinda want to put it towards something that changes on the ground.

I want to drive change in the province of BC, which has been home for my whole life, and see a difference when I’m 80 years old. I want to see wildlife overpasses. I want to see abundant populations of caribou. I want to see fire-maintained ecosystems that aren’t endangering the cities around them.

I recently worked with the BC Ministry of Transportation which is shifting towards a more balanced mandate of also considering wildlife. While it’s not necessarily in the full scope of their mandate, they realize that they are building infrastructure in an incredibly biodiverse connectivity zone.

We’re working towards win-win solutions where you can have benefits for people, wildlife, and save money in the long run. These are the things that make it worth getting up in the morning for.

Q: Well said! Lastly, where do you feel that organisations like WCS Canada can have the most impact?

CL: There's increasingly a role for non-government organizations in educating the public on the state of wildlife and the environment in Canada. WCS has a strong science portfolio and I think there's absolutely a need for that.

A number of government organizations have fewer and fewer actual scientists within them, so a lot of that science is being done outside of government now.

There’s huge need for brokers of knowledge and evidence who can provide unbiased and rigorous information to the people of Canada. But also to fill knowledge gaps that inform policy or the management of wildlife. There’s lots of really good stuff done under the WCS Canada umbrella - it's awesome.