Wildlife Restoration Ecology

在整个地球上，人类对环境的改造从未像今天这样广泛。因此，加拿大最知名的野生动物驯鹿、麋鹿、鹿、狼、熊等的数量正在下降。这些下降的发生是因为人们改变了物种之间发生的相互作用的类型：食物链中的链接被打破了。为了应对这些影响，野生动物恢复生态学已成为生命科学中一门重要的新学科。恢复也是加拿大环境立法的支柱。如果恢复是成功的，科学家们必须开发和翻译人类如何影响物种之间的相互作用和生态过程的知识。这个加拿大二级研究主席（CRC）在野生动物恢复生态学的目标是解决人类活动对人类之间的相互作用的影响，大型捕食者（狼，熊，美洲狮），他们的猎物（鹿，麋鹿），和植物在人类改造的景观。该CRC计划的方法采用了野外实验，GPS跟踪和卫星图像的新颖组合，将个人，种群和社区的生态学结合在一起。具体而言，主席将调查自然资源开采，基础设施和人与野生动物的冲突如何不仅改变物种丰度，而且改变这些物种在景观中移动并相互作用的方式。该主席站在努力恢复野生动物种群和为粮食安全和文化目的而依赖野生动物的人们的最前沿。这项研究的意义对于加拿大保护生物多样性和支持人类与野生动物相互作用的国际承诺具有重要意义，这些承诺往往是国家政府与土著社区之间和解努力的核心。

Across the Earth, human modification of the environment has never been so widespread as it is today. As a result, many populations of Canada's most recognizable wildlife-caribou, elk, deer, wolves, bears-are declining. These declines are occurring because people have altered the types of interactions that occur between species: the links in the food chain are broken. To counter these impacts, wildlife restoration ecology has emerged as a significant new discipline in the life sciences. Restoration also forms the backbone of environmental legislation in Canada. If restoration is to succeed, scientists must develop and translate knowledge of how people affect species interactions and ecological processes.The objective of this Tier II Canada Research Chair (CRC) in Wildlife Restoration Ecology are to address the impact of human activity on the interactions among people, large predators (wolves, bears, cougars), their prey (deer, elk), and plants in human-modified landscapes. The approach of this CRC program features a novel combination of field experiments, GPS tracking, and satellite imagery to bring together the ecology of individuals, populations, and communities. Specifically, the Chair will investigate how natural resource extraction, infrastructure, and human-wildlife conflict not only change species abundance, but the manner in which these species move through the landscape and interact with one another. The Chair is positioned at the forefront of efforts to restore wildlife populations and the people that depend on wildlife for food security and cultural purposes. The implications of this research are significant for Canada's international commitments to conserve biodiversity and to support human-wildlife interactions that often are at the center of reconciliation efforts between national governments and Indigenous communities.