Roger Creasey works with Shell’s various business units in their activities across North America. Creasey, a professional biologist by trade, is also an adjunct professor with the University of Calgary’s Faculty of Environmental Design and has taught courses in Ecuador, Thailand and Cambodia as part of the Faculty. In 2005, he was awarded a prestigious Emerald Award for Corporate/Institutional Leadership by the Alberta Emerald Foundation and he received a Prairie Conservation Award in 1993 for his work in developing practices and policies to reduce the oil/gas footprint on native prairie ecosystems.

Creasey initiated the Montane Research Program through Shell Canada and coordinates the research activities and fieldwork. Roger has worked in the field of energy regulation and environmental effects for over 33 years.

Rod Sinclair was born on a ranch in southern Saskatchewan and moved to Alberta shortly after where he grew up on various ranches near Edmonton, Longview and Pincher Creek. Eventually he became employed with Shell Canada where he has worked for over 30 years now at the Waterton Complex in southwest Alberta. He is the current Community Affairs Coordinator for the Waterton region and enjoys his job working in the community to build and sustain relationships with stakeholders and neighbors along with finding better ways for industry and people to coexist with the environment in a effective, safe and sustainable manner.

Rod is an avid outdoorsman and photographer and together with his wife Susan they have a small business called Sinclair Imagery Inc. He has contributed images to various organizations such as Mule Deer Foundation, Alberta Wilderness Association, the Nature Conservancy of Canada and National Geographic.

View Rod’s photos at: http://rodsinclair.smugmug.com/

Mark Boyce’s position is endowed by the Alberta Conservation Association, which manages funds from the sale of hunting and fishing licenses in Alberta. Research in his lab focuses on projects of interest to Alberta hunters and an¬glers. He has a large laboratory with ten students and two postdocs conduct¬ing research on black bears, grizzly bears, cougars, marten, otters, mink, muskrats, wolves, elk, caribou, mule deer, ring-necked pheasants and sage grouse. These projects are designed to help improve the management of wildlife resources in Alberta.

Although the ACA is the main funding agency, additional sponsors for these projects come from many sources including: Alberta Ingenuity, Alberta Pacific, Alberta Professional Outfitters Society, Alberta Sustainable Resource Development, Boone and Crockett Club, Canadian Foundation for Innovation, Ducks Unlimited, Foothills Model Forest, National Geographic Society, NSERC, Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, Safari Club International, Wilburforce Foundation, Camp Fire Club and Wildlife Habitat Canada.

Wildlife conservation and management depends on habitat preservation and remediation. Therefore, a number of Boyce’s students are studying habitat models that can be used to anticipate the consequences of industrial development in Alberta. Roads, oil and gas pipelines, seismic lines and other linear features influence wildlife by increasing human access and by displac¬ing animals from habitats.

In addition to the Elk Study, Boyce’s team has developed a way to anticipate how habitat alteration will negatively affect (to extinction) at-risk species including sage grouse, caribou, and grizzly bears. The team also researches the role of predator-prey interactions in the manage¬ment of wildlife populations and has demonstrated that the presence of wolves shape movement and habitat-selection patterns by elk. They have also developed models for optimal harvest policies to ensure sustainable harvesting strategies for wildlife populations.

Marco Musiani teaches wildlife management and landscape ecology and supervises graduate students interested in these subjects on a variety of related themes. He also contributes to courses and projects on interdisciplinary approaches to ecological issues and planning. His work on wolf depredation on livestock incorporates interdisciplinary problem solving, conducting scientifically sound research and the application of ecological research to decision making.

Many of Musiani’s projects are centred on carnivore species that serve as entry points into broader environmental issues. As an example, one of his projects dealt with livestock protection from wolves in the Balkans. The initiative is part of an umbrella research project entitled “Development assistance to livestock farmers in the mountainous areas of Serbia, Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO)”.

He is currently studying interactions between people, wild carnivores (wolves, coyotes, black bears and grizzly bears), and herbivores (caribou, elk, deer, cattle, bighorn sheep) in their ecosystem throughout western Alberta using GPS tracking devices. Marco also publishes in many international scientific journals including Conservation Biology, BioScience, and Animal Welfare.

Musiani has been the recipient of numerous awards and scholarships including the prestigious National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Doctoral and Postdoctoral Fellowships, the Izaak Walton Killam Memorial Scholarship (twice), the Government of Canada Award, and the Government of Poland Award.

Cristina Eisenberg obtained an M.A. in Environmental Studies from Prescott College in 2005. Her thesis was on the subject of Aldo Leopold and wolf conservation. She is currently a third year Ph.D. student in Forestry and Wildlife at Oregon State University's College of Forestry, and a Boone and Crockett Fellow. She has taught courses on Aldo Leopold and Ecosystem Management and Top Carnivores and Public Policy. Eisenberg is writing a book for Island Press about the effect of large predators on food webs, Landscapes of Hope: Trophic Cascades and Biodiversity, to be published in 2010. Other research interests include large carnivore conservation on landscapes of multiple human land use, such as ranches.

Eisenberg's objective for the Montane Research Program is to investigate how an apex predator (like a wolf) affects aspen communities by influencing abundance and behaviour of large herbivore prey. She will use data from the collars allocated to the Waterton Elk Herd to track elk movements and to examine how wolf-elk dynamics and predation risk may affect elk resource selection. She hopes to identify interactions between patterns of wolf activity and predation risk and elk movements. Eisenberg’s study will also include factors such as elk vigilance, aspen canopy structure and growth, biodiversity (species richness), and historical elk-wolf numbers.

Tyler Muhly has a B.Sc. in Biology and Environmental Science from Trent University and a Masters of Environmental Design (M.E.Des.) from the University of Calgary. His Masters thesis examined factors contributing to livestock depredation by wolves in southwest Alberta. While finishing his Masters degree, he was a Research Associate on a major research project in Yellowstone National Park that examined the ecology of bison movement and distribution. After completing his Master’s degree he worked for two years as an environmental consultant in Alberta. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Faculty of Environmental Design at the University of Calgary where he is researching the influence of humans on wildlife communities in southwest Alberta.

Justin Pitt is a graduate student at the University of Alberta and is supervised by Mark Boyce. Pitt grew up in Iowa as an avid hunter, trapper, and outdoorsman. He completed his B.Sc. degree at Iowa State University in Animal Ecology specializing in wildlife management issues. Pitt worked on a river otter project in Iowa for his undergraduate thesis (see http://www.eeob.iastate.edu/faculty/ClarkW/html/otter.html ) in collaboration with Dr. William Clark and the Iowa Department of Natural Resources..

Pitt went on to complete an M.Sc. degree at the University of Saskatchewan, supervised by Drs. Francois Messier and Serge Larivière. In collaboration with the Delta Waterfowl Foundation, he worked with raccoons and skunks as well as tackled questions about waterfowl predator population dynamics and spatial ecology. Pitt started his Ph.D. at the University of Alberta in the fall of 2006.

Dale Paton is a lifelong resident of the Montane in southwest Alberta and is an avid hiker, hunter and fisherman. As an ecological consultant he has completed assessments of bats and birds, ungulate and carnivore monitoring and raptor research for both industry and government agencies.

As part of the Montane Elk Research group, Paton’s thesis will investigate elk travel corridors during migration from winter ranges to their summer ranges. Human recreation and industry development often contact these migration routes and may move elk onto private lands. This may cause livestock-elk grazing conflicts, limit genetic exchange between elk herds, or limit the ability of elk to shift natural ranges in response to climate change or disturbance. Results from this thesis will enable provincial wildlife managers and industry to better plan and conserve critical elk seasonal ranges and traditional migratory routes, in connection with industry development.

Carly is a M.E.Des. candidate under Dr. Marco Musiani at the University of Calgary. She grew up in Vancouver, BC and completed her B.Sc. in Animal Biology at the University of British Columbia in 2006. While obtaining her undergraduate degree she worked on various vertebrate and invertebrate research projects focusing on social behaviour and evolution. Her undergraduate thesis focused on social dynamics in African Wild Dog packs.

Since receiving her B.Sc. she has continued to volunteer with animal conservation projects. She enrolled at the University of Calgary to start her M.E.Des. degree in 2007. Her thesis project will examine residents’ perceptions of wolves in southwest Alberta and the effects on wolf management strategies.

Andrea Morehouse is a graduate student at the University of Alberta and is supervised by Mark Boyce. Andrea received her B.Sc. from Tufts University in 2004 with a double major in Biology and Environmental Studies. Upon completion of her degree, Andrea spent several years working on various wildlife projects across the United States and South America. She has worked with a wide variety of species including seabirds, ungulates, small mammals, amphibians, monkeys, and fishers. She enrolled at the University of Alberta in Edmonton in September 2007 to begin her M.Sc. degree.

Joe Northrup is a M.Sc. student under Dr. Mark Boyce at the University of Alberta. He grew up in rural Vermont, in the United States before obtaining his Bachelor’s degree in biology from Bates College in Maine, where he conducted an undergraduate thesis on the spatial distribution of beach invertebrates.

Since graduation, he has worked and volunteered as a research technician on various wildlife related projects in the United States and abroad. He started his M.Sc. in the fall of 2007 on the effects of access management on grizzly bear habitat use and movement.

Allan received his B.Sc. in Zoology from University College Dublin in Ireland in 2003. He began his Ph.D. immediately in the same University, funded by the Irish Research Council for Science, Engineering and Technology (IRCSET) and Enterprise Ireland. His Ph.D. research focused on applying genetic techniques to study the evolutionary and colonization history of the Irish pygmy shrew under the direction of Prof. Jeremy Searle.

After completion of his Ph.D. in 2008, Allan has worked on the conservation genetics of caribou in the Canadian Rockies under Drs. Marco Musiani, Stefano Mariani and Mark Hebblewhite. Just prior to arriving in Canada, he worked on the origins of, and hybridization between, red and sika deer in Ireland with Dr. Ruth Carden.

Allan left Ireland for Canada in late 2008 to join Marco Musiani’s lab and the Montane Research Program as a postdoctoral researcher. His current research is looking at the effects of habitat selection and human disturbances on genetic structure and relatedness in Rocky Mountain elk.

Isabelle Laporte graduated from the University of Calgary in November 2008 with a M.E.Des. under the supervision of Dr. Marco Musiani. Her thesis work for the Montane Research Program focused on cattle and elk behavioral responses to wolf visits. Before her graduate studies, Isabelle had completed an Honour B.Sc. in Physical Geography at the University of Montreal. Upon completion of her degree, Isabelle spent summers working on a bio-acoustic research project with the Michigan State University and the University of Montreal. Since November 2008, Isabelle has been working with Natural Resource Canada as a policy analyst in Ottawa.

Alberta Conservation Association Partners

Mike Jokinen started his career in biology with Fish and Wildlife in Canmore. While in the Canmore area he had the opportunity to work on a variety of ungulate and carnivore related projects, including aerial ungulate surveys. Since the summer of 2002 he has been working with the ACA in the Crowsnest Pass. Mike has been involved in a variety of projects in the Crownest Pass region, involving fisheries, habitat, and wildlife but has applied most of his effort studying the survival and demography of bighorn sheep in the Yarrow-Castle region of southwest Alberta. Mike enjoys exploring the mountainous landscapes of southwest Alberta, in search of the perfect fish, hike, hunt or photograph. He completed his B.Sc. degree at the University of Lethbridge.

As part of the Montane Elk Research Committee, the ACA wishes to contribute to the team by utilizing the GPS collar elk location data during winter to help identify winter ranges used by mature bull elk (3+ antler points) that may not currently be surveyed, and if necessary, develop a site-specific model to predict the proportion of both bull and cow elk that are not observed during aerial surveys. This tool would correct for missed elk during population trend aerial surveys, improving the accuracy of population counts used for tag allocation and land use decisions. Additional information is provided in the Study Updates section.

Nathan Webb is a wildlife biologist with the ACA, based in Rocky Mountain House. His work focuses primarily on the provincial Aerial Ungulate Survey program, and he also serves as a member of the provincial Ungulate Team. Prior to joining the ACA in 2008, Nate was a Ph.D. student in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Alberta, under the supervision of Dr. Evelyn Merrill. His Ph.D. research focuses on investigating wolf population dynamics and predation rates in response to prey distribution and exploitation by humans in West-Central Alberta. Nate has also conducted research on black bears, snowshoe hare, small mammals, lynx and coyotes in the eastern United States.