Click here for information about our past conferences, courses, and meetings. Download free conference summaries, view lists of our event partners, and more.
Urban Wildlife Challenges and Management conference, April 18 - 19, 2012 in Cranbrook, BC. The speaker list is posted and we are open for registrations.
CMI Annual Researchers' Meeting, May 1, 2012 in Nelson
Call for presentations, posters, and field trips is now open.
Capture-recapture for Spatial Data course, May 29-31, 2012 in Nelson BC
Register now. As of January 31 at noon, there are 4 spots left. When the course fills we will start a wait list.
"Life happens" and "contracts go awry" so putting your name on the wait list could be a good thing.
Soils Refresher Course, May 31 - June 1, 2011 in Castlegar BC
Register now.
This course is co-hosted with Selkirk College.
GPS Unleashed - Making the most of your GPS unit, May in Castlegar (details coming soon)
This course is co-hosted with Selkirk College.
Introduction to R Software, June 5 - 6, 2012 in Nelson BC.
Register now.
*** You may wish to review our Registration and Cancellation Policy
before you register for any of our events. ***
Click here to receive our event announcements.
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April 18-19, 2012
Rocky Mountain Prestige Inn, 209 Van Horne Street South
Cranbrook BC
Wildlife numbers are increasing within many British Columbia municipalities, leading to more interactions with humans and our infrastructure. Interactions can lead to property damage, public safety issues, public health concerns, impacts on biodiversity, and death or suffering of wildlife. Deer, elk, coyotes, moose, geese, racoons, bears, and other animals can become more than a nuisance, putting themselves and humans at risk. Through a combination of presentations, posters, and field trips, this conference will address the environmental, social, and economic issues related to wildlife in urban settings.

We anticipate a multidisciplinary group of people: provincial, regional district, and municipal staff; biologists; resource managers; First Nations; academics; industry, stewardship groups; and others with an interest in human–wildlife interactions.
Photo by Lorne Smithson, Grand Forks
An agenda will be posted here, closer to the date of the conference.
Evening speaker, April 187:30 p.m. in our conference room at the Rocky Mountain Prestige Inn Dr. Michael Proctor, of Birchdale Ecological Ltd. Co-existing with grizzly bears in the urban/rural Creston ValleyDr. Proctor will speak about recovering threatened grizzly populations, re-establishing regional connectivity,
and providing adaptive options for climate change.
The general public is invited to join the conference participants |
Offers to bring along a poster will be accepted until two weeks before the conference. Posters should be related to the theme of the conference, not commercial in nature, and not advocacy-oriented. Please read the submission guidelines.
Register here. When you submit the form you can ask for a PDF invoice or pay with a credit card using PayPal (you don't need a PayPal account). Your registration is not secured until CMI receives payment.
The conference registration fee includes two lunches and coffee breaks (no dinner).
Be sure you've read the Cancellation Policy on the registration form. There are no refunds after March 31, and there is a $50 retainer on any cancellations before then.
| Regular fee | $275.00 + HST |
| CMI Member fee You can join CMI using the registration form and take advantage of this reduced fee immediately. |
$250.00 + HST |
| Students, oral presenters, and representatives of stewardship groups | $175.00 + HST |
Rates of $90.00 per night plus taxes are available at the Prestige Rocky Mountain Resort in Cranbrook. To receive the rate you need to mention that you are attending "the Urban Wildlife Conference" at the time you make your booking. Only 40 rooms are available at this price. This is the rate given to government staff; if YOU are government staff please do not ask for one of these rooms, just register without mentioning you are part of this conference. THANKS! That way the rooms with a special rate will be still be available to the the non-government people.
Prestige Rocky Mountain Resort
Phone toll free: 1-877-737-8443
Phone local: 250-417-0444
Cranbrook@PrestigeHotels.ca

Photo by Tom Sparrow, Fort St. John
May 1, 2012
Lakeside Prestige Resort, Nelson BC
Every year CMI members get together to provide updates on their projects (research, field trials, new initiatives in southeastern British Columbia) and catch up on each other’s news. It’s an informal atmosphere and non-CMI members and post-secondary students are welcome to attend.
CMI's short Annual General Meeting will be held immediately after lunch. There is no charge to attend only the AGM.
We have aligned our Annual Meeting with the much larger annual conference of the Association of Professional Biology of BC, which will be held at the Prestige Lakeside Resort from May 2 to May 5. On the day following our meeting, the Association of Professional Biology meeting begins with a choice of field trips, and short courses, such as David Polster's "Natural processes for the restoration of drastically disturbed sites". Be sure to check the Association's web site for updates and information on how to register. CMI members are encouraged to register for Association's activities. You do not need to be a member of their Association to register. The Association is looking for offers of field trips and presentations.
Our call for presentations, posters, and field tripsIf you have information of interest to others interested in the ecology of southeastern BC, we'd like to hear from you. You are welcome to think beyond "PowerPoint". Perhaps you just want to stand up and say a few words? Or you have a demonstration of some kind? Or maybe you'd like to bring along a poster? If your information is not commercial in nature, and it's not advocating for a cause, then take a few minutes to write down what you want to talk about and send it in. We have submission guidelines here.
Offers of field trips are welcome, too. CMI field trips would be on May 1, or maybe you would consider offering your field trip on May 2 through the Association of Professional Biology of BC, to include their attendees. To offer a field trip on May 2, contact David Polster.
Offers of CMI presentations are due by April 1 but may be accepted after that if we have room in the agenda.
We will open for registrations in early April. Your registration includes lunch and coffee breaks.
Costs for the CMI Annual Researchers' Meeting are:
Presenters need to pay the fee. Please be sure to read the cancellation policy on the registration form.
You will need to pay before your registration is secured. CMI accepts credit cards through our service with PayPal, but you don't need to have a PayPal account to use the service.
If you are signing up for events hosted by the Association of Professional Biology you will need to check what their fee schedules are.
A block of rooms has been reserved at the Prestige Lakeside Resort at the special rate of $89.00 plus taxes. You are responsible for making the actual booking for your room and for the cost of your room. Be sure to mention that you are part of this Columbia Mountains Institute meeting to get the special rate. Book early to get a room, because the rooms we have reserved will be “released” one week before the course.
Prestige Lakeside Resort
701 Lakeside Drive,
Nelson, BC V1L 6G3
Nelson@PrestigeHotels.ca
Phone 250-352-7222 or toll free
1-87-PRESTIGE
Information about other campsites and accommodations can be found at the website of the Nelson Chamber of Commerce.
May 29-31, 2012
Prestige Lakeside Resort, Nelson BC
Instructor: Dr. Murray Efford, Otago University, New Zealand
Class size: Class size is limited to 16 people.
Cost: $675.00 plus HST to be paid at the time of registration. Software for the course is free from the internet.
Course fee includes: Instruction and coffee breaks. Participants are responsible for their own meals and hotel arrangements. Participants are to bring a laptop computer pre-loaded with software (see below).
Registration information is here.
Animal populations are often studied by trapping individuals, marked or otherwise distinguishable, at discrete points in space or by searching an area for sign. The statistical analysis of such data to estimate population density or size is more robust and effective if it accounts for the spatial distribution of sampling. There has been rapid growth of relevant methods and software in the last few years, but these have yet to appear in standard texts. Spatially explicit capture–recapture (SECR) analyses are used widely for bear populations sampled with hair snags and for large cats caught on automatic cameras. The methods extend to grid trapping of small mammals, mist-netting of birds, DNA from feces, and sounds recorded on microphone arrays.
This 3-day short course introduces the core concepts of SECR, the free Windows software ‘Density’ and the R package ‘secr’. There will be some time set aside to discuss participants’ data. Specific topics to be covered include:
Our instructorDr. Murray Efford is a population ecologist with long experience in live-trapping studies. He has recently focused on developing spatially explicit capture–recapture methods, and acoustic methods for assessing bird populations. He is the author of the Windows software ‘Density’ and the R package ‘secr’, and has presented SECR workshops in New Zealand, Malaysia, UK, and Canada.
Participants should have some knowledge of conventional capture–recapture methods and model selection using AIC. Familiarity with R is recommended.
The Windows program Density will be discussed and used for demonstrations, but it is not essential. Download it from www.otago.ac.nz/density and use a program such as WinZip to unzip the single zip file in a folder of your choice.
If you do not already have R installed (version 2.12 or later) then install it from, e.g., http://cran.stat.sfu.ca/ . Click on Windows (or MacOS X) in the Download and Install R section. If installing for Windows select ‘base’ in the R for Windows Section. Now download R-2.14 for Windows. Save the executable file (about 46Mb) to your hard drive. Next double-click the executable file to install R on your machine. Choose the default settings. R should now be installed on your machine.
To install the R package ‘secr’ in Windows, open R while you are connected to the internet and select Packages | Install package(s) from the menu. Select a suitable mirror site (e.g. Canada (BC)) and then find ‘secr’ in the alphabetical package list. Selecting ‘secr’ installs the package itself and any required packages. The process differs only slightly on Mac and other systems.
Some optional features of ‘secr’ use “suggested” packages that you may also wish to install: ‘sp’ and ‘maptools’ for reading shapefiles; ‘spsurvey’ for representative spatial sampling with GRTS; ‘gpclib’, ‘rgdal’ and ‘rgeos’ for other GIS-related functions.
You will need a PDF reader such as Adobe Reader.
Cost is $675.00 + HST
When the course fills, we will begin a wait list.
The course will be held at the Prestige Lakeside Resort in Nelson. http://www.prestigeinn.com/nelson-lakeside-prestige-hotel.php
A block of rooms has been reserved at the Prestige Lakeside Resort at the rate of $89.00 plus taxes. You are responsible for making the actual booking for your room and for the cost of your room. Be sure to mention that you are part of this Columbia Mountains Institute course to get the special rate. Book early to get a room, because the rooms we have reserved will be “released” two weeks before the course. (There are two Prestige Hotels in Nelson, be sure you are in the right one)
Prestige Lakeside Resort
701 Lakeside Drive, Nelson, BC V1L 6G3
Nelson@PrestigeHotels.ca
Phone 250-352-7222 or toll free 1-87-PRESTIGE
Information about other accommodations can be found at the website of the Nelson Chamber of Commerce.
Questions?For questions about course content or downloading software, For questions about your registration, contact office@cmiae.org or |
May 31 & June 1, 2012
Selkirk College, Castlegar BC

This course is co-hosted by
Columbia Mountains Institute of Applied Ecology
and Selkirk College.
Cost: $280.00 + HST
Instructor: Derek Marcoux
Class size: Maximum 20 participants
Location: Castlegar campus of Selkirk College. Use the main entrance to the college and follow the signs to the classroom.
Times: 9:00 a.m. to about 4:00 p.m. both days.
Course fee includes: Course handbook, coffee breaks, and lunch on first day. No food or drinks provided for field day.
Bring: Note-taking materials, outdoor clothing, good boots, and rain gear. You need to bring your own food and drinks for the field day.
The Soils Refresher course is intended for biologists, foresters and other resource professionals interested in reviewing basic concepts of soils and soil management.
Topics to be covered include:
Participants will spend the first day mostly in the classroom and lab reviewing basic soils concepts and practicing field texturing. A short field trip may be held on the first day to review some concepts. On the second day, participants will go on an all-day field trip from Castlegar to Grand Forks to review the soil properties in forest, riparian, wetland, and grassland environments. Car-pooling will be needed.
Cost is $280.00 plus HST. Registration form is here. Your registration is not secured until CMI receives payment.
How to pay: When you submit the registration form you can ask for a PDF invoice or pay with a credit card using our PayPal service (you don't need a PayPal account).
Be sure you've read the Cancellation Policy on the registration form. There are no refunds after May 15, and there is a $50 retainer on any cancellations before then. If the course is cancelled the Columbia Mountains Institute is not responsible for any costs other than a full refund of the registration fee.
Our instructorDerek Marcoux is a Professional Biologist with 20 years experience in ecosystem classification, botany, and soil classification. He has worked on numerous field projects for ecosystem classification and ecosystem mapping across the province. He has been teaching applied ecosystem and soils classification skills in the environmental programs at Selkirk College for the past 14 years.
Day 1 - Classroom day at Selkirk College campus in Castlegar
Day 2 - Field trip from Castlegar to Grand Forks.
Excellent pre-reading and a resource for your future! Valentine, K.W.G., Sprout, P.N., Baker, T.E., Lawkulich, L.M. (Eds.), 1978, The Soil Landscapes of British Columbia. BC Ministry of Environment, Resource Analysis Branch. 197p. |
Questions?About course content: Derek Marcoux dmarcoux@selkirk.ca About registration and payment: CMI office office@cmiae.org or call |
June 5-6, 2012
Prestige Lakeside Resort, Nelson BC
Instructor: Dr. Joseph Thorley, Poisson Consulting, Nelson http://www.poissonconsulting.ca/
Class size: Class size is limited to 8 people.
Cost: $475.00 + $57.00 HST = $532.00 to be paid at the time of registration. Software for the course is free from the internet.
Course fee includes: Instruction, course manual, and coffee breaks. Participants are responsible for their own meals and hotel arrangements. Participants are to bring a laptop computer pre-loaded with software (see below).
This two-day course will introduce users to R software, so that they are able to begin manipulating data, performing statistical analyses, and plotting graphs on their own. The course is suitable for individuals who have never used R before as well as R-users looking to consolidate their understanding of the basics.
R is a free programming environment for data manipulation, statistical analyses, and graphics that is becoming increasingly popular among biologists. R is extremely powerful, can be readily extended to non-standard methods through the downloading of packages, and runs on a wide variety of operating systems (http://www.r-project.org/). Participants are expected to have a working knowledge of linear regression and ANOVA.
Please note: This is a course on how to use R software, not a course on statistical methods.

This course will be taught by Dr. Joseph Thorley, R.P.Bio. (Poisson Consulting Ltd.). Joe is a Nelson-based fisheries biologist and analyst with over twelve years of programming experience.
The course will run from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day with an hour break for lunch. Coffee breaks are included but participants are responsible for their own accommodation and meals.
Day 1
R Basics
Vectors
Data frames
Importing data
Day 2
R Programming
Graphics
Linear models in R
Participants are to bring a Windows (or MacOS X) laptop with the latest version of R installed (see below). Consider bringing an external monitor if your laptop has a small screen.
For questions about installing R, contact Joe Thorley at joe@poissonconsulting.ca .
In order to install the R software please go to http://cran.stat.sfu.ca/ . Then click on Windows (or MacOS X) in the Download and Install R Section. If installing for Windows select base in the R for Windows Section. Now download R-2.13 for Windows (or the most recent version if R 2.13 has been superseded). Save the executable file to your hard drive. Next double-click the executable file to install R on your machine. Choose the default settings. R should now be installed on your machine. If you have questions about installing R, contact Joe Thorley at joe@poissonconsulting.ca .
You will need to pay before your registration is secured. You can use our on-line payment system with PayPal (you don’t need a PayPal account to use your credit card) or we can send you an invoice as a PDF and you can mail a cheque ASAP.
Be sure you’ve read the cancellation policy on the registration form. You may wish to view our Policy on Registration and Cancellation.
Your registration and payment will be confirmed by email. If you don't hear back in a day or so, please call to confirm that your registration was received.
When the course fills, we will begin a wait list. There is a possibility of expanding the number of people we can accommodate, to a maximum of 12 people.
The course will be held at the Prestige Lakeside Resort in Nelson. http://www.prestigeinn.com/nelson-lakeside-prestige-hotel.php
A block of rooms has been reserved at the Prestige Lakeside Resort at the rate of $95.00 plus taxes. You are responsible for making the actual booking for your room and for the cost of your room. Be sure to mention that you are part of this Columbia Mountains Institute course to get the special rate. Book early to get a room, because the rooms we have reserved will be “released” two weeks before the course.
Prestige Lakeside Resort
701 Lakeside Drive,
Nelson, BC V1L 6G3
Nelson@PrestigeHotels.ca
Phone 250-352-7222 or toll free
1-87-PRESTIGE
Information about other accommodations can be found at the website of the Nelson Chamber of Commerce.
Questions?For questions about course content or downloading R software, For questions about your registration or general information about the |
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The purpose of the Columbia Mountains Institute of Applied Ecology is to improve ecological management by increasing and sharing knowledge about the ecology of the Columbia Mountains and regional ecosystems.
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Columbia Mountains Institute of Applied Ecology
Box 2568 Revelstoke, B.C. V0E 2S0
Tel: 250-837-9311 Fax: 250-837-9311
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