5. Web Site about Western Canadian Glaciers – featuring the Illecillewaet Glacier in Glacier National Park
CMI Member Dr. Dan McCarthy at Brock University supervised the preparation of this web site. It includes sections on: Recent Climate Change in the Canadian Rockies; Researcher's Guide to the Illecillewaet Glacier; Photographic History of the Illecillewaet Glacier (awesome collection of photos, Dan!); Using Lichens and Trees to Estimate the Timing of Past Glacial Activity; Glaciology at the Geological Survey of Canada; Rivers of Life; and Fun with Glaciers. "Fun with Glaciers" includes "Find and Click on the Lost Gear". Hmm Dan, wonder how you thought of that game? Dan will be adding to the site as time permits. View it at:
http://www.brocku.ca/virtualmuseum/

Introduction to Culturally Modified Trees
June 4-5, 2003
UNBC Prince George

The 2 day class and field course will give an introduction to Culturally Modified Trees (CMTs) that will be useful for archaeological field assistants, but also to professionals and technicians in the forest industry, and land managers. The course will involve several main components: current legislation governing CMT recording and protection; introduction to CMT types, to include forest harvesting in traditional northern interior aboriginal economies, why trees are felled, stripped, or otherwise modified in different ways;

the identification criteria for cultural vs. natural scars; importance of proper recording techniques, including obtaining dates with dendrochronology. For complete details and registration go to: http://www.unbc.ca/conted/

Call for Papers
Species At Risk 2004: Pathways to Recovery Conference
March 2-6, 2004
Victoria, British Columbia

The Species at Risk 2004: Pathways to Recovery Conference has four themes related to the conservation and recovery of species and ecosystems at risk:

• The Science of Recovery;
• The Mechanics and Logistics of Recovery;
• The Human Face of Recovery and Stewardship;

1. CMI News
Here is an announcement of an upcoming CMI course.

DNA-Based Wildlife Studies:
Study Design, Field Methods, Genetic Analysis, and Analysis of Mark-Recapture Data.
Late November 2003
Nelson BC

The David Suzuki Foundation has developed a new resource devoted to climate change impacts and solutions in British Columbia. Find out how climate change is affecting BC’s environment and its economy. Read about solutions municipal governments can take to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Learn about how the provincial government can make clean, renewable energy and energy efficiency cornerstones of its energy policy.

Helen Schwantje has been working with UNBC to produce this excellent manual. It was designed to be used by persons in northern British Columbia who encounter anomalies in wildlife. The manual will be particularly useful for groups that use wild animals as a food source, such as First Nations people or hunters, and for trappers that are in direct contact with wildlife. It is anticipated that this resource will provide information on specific wildlife health issues, and heighten awareness of wildlife diseases in general. You can search for diseases by the part of the body affected, or search by causative agent. Contains many links for more information. It’s available on-screen or you can download the whole manual as a PDF file.

This annotated bibliography provides an overview of primary research, almost all from peer-reviewed journals, documenting the adverse impacts of roads and logging on North American forest ecosystems. The bibliography was published in December 1999 by the Natural Resources Defence Council.

Wildlife Disease Association 52nd Annual Conference
August 11-14, 2003
Saskatoon Saskatchewan

Forest Land – Fish Conference II :Ecosystem Stewardship Through Collaboration
April 2004
Edmonton Alberta

The first Forest Land-Fish Conference focused on the effects of land-use activities on aquatic resources. This second conference will advance to the conservation of aquatic resources, particularly in boreal regions. Suggested topics are cumulative watershed effects, access management, and riparian management.

Visit their web site to be put on the distribution list for conference details as they develop:

1. CMI News
Have you looked at the Mountain Caribou Compendium on our web site? This is a collection of 125 reports about mountain caribou. The print version is housed at the Revelstoke Library (non-circulating collection), and an on-line version that includes abstracts but not the articles, is on our web site. You can view the abstracts for the 125 articles on-screen or download the abstracts in an MS Word file, and search for keywords with your Word search function. Go to www.cmiae.org and look in the "Mountain Caribou Compendium" section.

The CMI will begin collecting GST on registration fee and memberships as of October 1.

The CMI Directors and Research Associates are planning to meet for the afternoon of October 2 in Revelstoke, to talk about CMI issues and opportunities. 

Did you know that CMI has 60 individual members and 29 corporate members? Our email updates go out to 250+ people. To view a list of our corporate members, look at our web site in the " About CMI" section.

2. Root Rot Tracker Software
The most recent listing of the University of Northern BC Continuing Education Course Offerings includes a course demonstrating Root Rot Tracker, a simulation program for tracking the spread of forest root diseases. For information on this and their other courses, visit:
http://www.unbc.ca/conted/

3. Stand of giant cottonwoods found in southeastern BC
A grove of giant cottonwood trees that rival Canada's famed coastal cedars and firs in both age and girth has been discovered in the southern Rockies. The trees are close to 400 years old and up to 10 metres around. "They are, by far, the oldest known cottonwoods in the world," says Stewart Rood, a tree specialist at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, who describes the trees in the current issue of the Canadian Journal of Botany.

The above paragraph is excerpted from a Canwest News Service article. Read the whole article at:
http://www.canada.com/search/story.aspx?id=8695d1a6-21f0-4064-891f-5d5e314e08fb

Or. Go to the Canadian Journal of Botany article (444kb PDF) at:
http://article.pubs.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/ppv/RPViewDoc?_handler_=HandleInitial
Get&journal=cjb&volume=81&calyLang=eng&articleFile=b03-065.pdf

Did you know about the National Research Council’s free access to major Canadian journals?
Go to http://pubs.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/rp2_home_e.html

4. BC Mushrooms Web Site
http://bcmushrooms.forrex.org/

Now that the moisture is back the mushrooms will be out soon… you’ll want to see this FORREX site about BC Mushrooms. A major part of the site is devoted to ectomycorrhizal mushrooms from old forests in the Coastal Western Hemlock Zone, which were sampled for 4 years for aboveground ectomycorrhizal mushrooms. Around 200 different species were collected and described. Another part of the site is devoted to mushrooms as non-timber forest products. This part of the site describes details on morphology, synonyms, common names, ecology and habitats and look-alikes. There are also provide distribution maps and interesting facts about each mushroom.

5. Services available at Predator Conservation Alliance Web site
http://www.predatorconservation.org/predator_info/Forest_
Clearinghouse/forestclearinghousemain.html

This US group has assembled annotated bibliographies of the most important research and management documents regarding these forest carnivores - wolves, grizzly bears, lynx, wolverines, fishers, martens, Northern goshawks, cougars, black bears, and coyotes - including links to current federal and state management plans, US Endangered Species Act listing decisions, and more. The site has a US perspective but will be of interest to Canadians.

 

1. CMI News
Registrations are going well for the "Applying DNA Methods to the Study of Wildlife Distribution and Abundance" course to be held in Nelson on December 1-4. We have 4 spots left.

At our October 2 CMI Directors’ meeting we made some changes regarding topics for future workshops. Due to time constraints for our volunteer workshop organizers, overlap with other large conferences, and shrinking financial resources for people that would like to attend our workshops, we have re-thought next year’s events. Our major event for next year will now be an October 2004 workshop on fire management in the ESSF/ICH – what was learned from this summer’s fire season, what to look for in the future, etc. A description of the workshop will be out in the next few weeks. If you have topics you want to see covered, or suggestions for good speakers, please call me at the CMI office.

We are thinking of holding a two-day refresher course on statistics, for ecologists. The course comes highly recommended by those who have taken it before. We don't have a detailed description, costs, or dates available yet, but I’d appreciate a note from you if you think this is something you would find useful. If we have enough interest we will proceed with setting up the course.

If you have suggestions for a CMI course or information session, please pass them on! We prefer to hold specialized events that aren’t available through other institutions. Refresher courses are always good; so are sessions on how to use new techniques.

Communities and Natural Resources in Transition:
Linking social science and practitioners for a sustainable future
University of Northern BC - Prince George, BC
February 18 &19, 2004

Species At Risk 2004 – Pathways to Recovery
March 2-4, 2004
Victoria BC

FORREX has released a new publication about Monitoring Vegetation Change in Grasslands. Here is the abstract:

The concept of succession is fundamental to understanding and managing British Columbia’s grasslands. Grassland succession is affected by abiotic and biotic influences—fire and grazing, in particular, are natural disturbances central to the process of vegetation change. Many provincial grasslands are subjected to both domestic and wild ungulate grazing, and vegetation monitoring must be able to quantify these impacts separately. This publication summarizes current knowledge of the province’s grassland vegetation, touching briefly on origin and distribution, and current concepts of succession. Vegetation dynamics, disturbance ecology, and methods of monitoring are looked at in detail. Several case studies of range reference areas (range areas that exclude grazing) are discussed to highlight how successional data is used to monitor grasslands.