members

The Hudson Bay Project Team

Principal Investigators - still slogging in the tundra

	Kenneth Abraham is a wildlife biologist and conservation manager working primarily in arctic coastal ecosystems and the Hudson Bay Lowlands. He continues to study brant, Canada and lesser snow goose populations as well as goose-plant interactions extensively within this region. He also studies the ecology of a variety of shorebirds and sea duck species. He is very interested in developing methods for the rapid assessment of habitat damage. He is an Emeritus Research Scientist in the Wildlife Research and Development Section, Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, and an Adjunct Professor at Trent University.

	Rod Brook is a wildlife biologist examining the population dynamics and in community ecology of arctic breeding geese and ducks throughout the Northwest Territories, Nunavut and the Hudson Bay Lowlands. He is especially interested in developing fixed-wing based photographic systems to assess degradation and recovery of coastal tundra and boreal ecosystems. He is a Research Scientist in the Wildlife Research and Development Section, Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources.

	Glen Brown is an ecologist with research interests linking ecosystem processes, population dynamics, and individual behavioural strategies, with a current focus on wildlife inhabiting coastal ecosystems and the Hudson Bay Lowlands. His research is intended to inform conservation and management by addressing uncertainties in the effects of environmental heterogeneity and human perturbations on wildlife populations. Of recent interest is the effect of climate change on permafrost wetlands used as habitat for migratory water birds and other vertebrates, including arctic fox, and the resulting effects on species interactions and community dynamics. He is a Research Scientist with the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry and an Adjunct Professor at Trent University.

	Brian Darby is a soil ecologist interested in nematodes and other microinvertebrates in an ecological genomics framework. He uses molecular and sequencing tools to characterize soil microbial and microfaunal communities, identify genetic loci of adaptive significance, and understand how genetic differences between organisms affect their roles in ecosystem functioning. He also uses molecular tools to answer basic questions of wildlife ecology and natural history or to facilitate non-invasive monitoring of wildlife. He leads our polar bear genetics team. He is an Associate Professor at the University of North Dakota.

	Susan Ellis-Felege is a wildlife ecologist with broad interests in behavior, species’ interactions and community dynamics. Her research uses state of the art tools for data acquisition including remote camera traps and videography as well as unmanned aviation vehicles (UAV’s) with multiple sensors. She has developed citizen science based programs to extract data from the images obtained and uses quantitative and spatial (GIS) tools to analyze the data. She is an Associate Professor at the University of North Dakota.

	Chris Felege is a biological education specialist with interests in high impact practices such as undergraduate research, teaching and problem-based learning. His research evaluates long-term outcomes for students from such experiences. Chris is a member of our UAV flight team and given his training in science education, he will be heading up our community outreach program that will involve local students in our work. Chris is an instructor in the Biology Department at the University of North Dakota.

	David Iles is a population ecologist broadly interested in the effects of global change (including species invasions, climate change, and land-use conversion). Towards this goal, he has worked on a variety of systems, including vertebrates (sea ducks, geese, polar bears, and penguins), invertebrates (bumble bees), and plants. His research spans three interconnected areas of inquiry: 1) comparative demography and life history theory, 2) demographic (process-based) approaches to understanding population patterns, and 3) population projection and forecasting. He is currently a postdoctoral investigator at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

	Scott McWilliams is a nutritional and physiological ecologist whose interests center on wild vertebrates, with an emphasis on species of conservation interest. He uses an integrative approach that combines work on metabolic physiology, membrane transport of nutrients, digestive physiology, nutritional requirements, feeding behavior, ecological energetics, and constraints on prey and predator form and function. The goal is to understand how these traits jointly affect the animal’s ecology and influence community dynamics. He is a Professor at the University of Rhode Island.

	Robert Rockwell is a population biologist whose interests have centered on population dynamics, lifetime reproductive success and genetic structure of arctic geese and ducks. He has more recently focused his interests on the effects of climate change on the interactions of geese with their graminoid forage species and predators including grizzly and polar bears. He is also interested in the terrestrial foraging strategies of polar bears and how these are changing in the face of climate change. He is a Professor at the City University of New York and the American Museum of Natural History.

	Kathleen Schnaars-Uvino is an ecologist with broad interests in both birds and plants. She is interested in the recovery of habitat, severely degraded by destructive snow goose foraging and oversees our recovery ecology program. She is also interested in the declines in avian insectivores and their population trends, behavior and niche requirements, at and beyond the historic range. She is currently examining this by providing and monitoring artificial nest boxes to tree swallows north of tree line. She has involved the Churchill community in the work as citizen scientists. She is an Assistant Professor at the University of Jamestown.

Amber Alliger, Department of Psychology, Hunter College of CUNY, New York, NY

Lise Aubry, Department of Fish, Wildlife and Conservation Biology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado 80523 USA.

Evan Cooch, Department of Natural Resources, Fernow Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853 USA

Markus Dyck, Department of Environment, Government of Nunavut, Igloolik, NU X0A 0L0 Canada

Kate Edwards, Natural Resources Canada, Canadian Forest Service, Corner Brook, Newfoundland A2H 6J3 Canada

Milton Freeman, Canadian Circumpolar Institute, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

Mike Johnson, North Dakota Game and Fish, 100 North Bismarck Expressway, Bismarck, North Dakota 58501 USA

Dave Koons, Department of Fish, Wildlife and Conservation Biology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado 80523 USA.

Peter Kotanen, Department of Botany, University of Toronto at Mississauga, 3359 Mississauga Road North, Mississauga, Ontario, L5L 1C6, Canada.

Jim Leafloor, Canadian Wildlife Service, 123 Main Street, Suite 150, Winnipeg, Manitoba R3C 4W2 Canada

Erica Nol, Department of Biology, Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario K9J7B8 Canada

Anne Via McCollough, Bird Department, American Museum of Natural History, Central Park West at 79th St., New York, NY 10024

	Andrew Barnas, Biology Department, University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, ND 58202. Andrew is a PhD student at the University of North Dakota researching applications of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) in wildlife ecology. His primary interests are understanding how wildlife behaviours are impacted by UAS surveys and estimating snow goose nest density from UAS imagery. " .

	Kim Bennett, Wildlife Research and Development Section, Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, DNA Bldg., Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario K9J 7B8 Canada. Kim is a wildlife research technician with over 7 years of field experience working in the Hudson Bay Lowlands. She has been involved with studies that include population monitoring and nesting ecology of Canada and lesser snow goose populations.

	Stephen Brenner, Department of Natural Resources Science, University of Rhode Island, Kinston, RI. Stephen recently completed his Masters degree at URI and has begun a new project on the Cape Churchill Peninsula examining the relation of size, condidtion and reproductive success of savannah sparrows and yellow warblers to habitat quality.

	Tom Dolman, Departments of Wildlife Biology and Conservation Law Enforcement, Unity College, Unity ME. Tom worked on all our research programs this summer from monitoring snow geese and common eiders, through a new study on carnivorus plants to rapid assesment of habitat quality.

	Sarah Hagey, Wildlife Research and Development Section, Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry, Peterborough, Ontario. She is a wildlife research technician and has been working in the Hudson Bay Lowlands for 15 years. Sarah has been heavily involved with nesting ecology studies and banding of Canada Geese and Snow Geese as well as many other projects related to plant communities, goose-plant interactions and habitat assessment and degradation. She is considered the “go-to” person for most everything related to the field program.

	Sam Hervey, Biology Department, University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, ND 58202. Sam is an undergraduate student whose interests include the use of UAV's in monitoring nesting snow geese and eider ducks, the use of molecular techniques to evaluate the local abundance and relatedness of polar bears and the use of molecular techniques to estimate the levels of nest parasitism and extra pair bond copulation in snow geese and eider ducks.

	Justin Leegard, Biology Department, University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, ND. While Justin worked on all the research programs this summer, he oversaw the common eider work and managed the bulk of our nest cameras. He was also involved in our rapid assessment of habitat quality project.

	Tanner Stechmann, Biology Department, University of North Dakota, Grand Forks. Tanner is a graduate student whose interests include the use of miniature surveillance cameras to study nesting behaviors of common eiders and the use of isotopes to investigate potential diet shifts that may contribute to changes in breeding behaviors and reproductive success.

	Frank Uvino, Broad Channel, NY. Frank, using the helicopter to move lumber, is the facilities manager at the La Pérouse Bay Research Station. He has overseen construction of our three new buildings and has made sure they have lights, heat and running water. He is working towards making the facility more ecologically friendly. He makes the finest meat balls on earth.