The Human-Wildlife Interaction Research Group focuses on collaborative and community-oriented approaches to conservation. The projects that we lead, or are a part of reflect our commitment to wildlife conservation and to the communities we work with. Below is an overview of the current research projects that our researchers are a either leading, or a part of:

Transforming Arctic Conservation through Social Innovation (TACSI)

David Kuptana, an Inuvialuk hunter and guide, setting up the first remote cameras at community members’ cabins on the Beaufort Sea coast. Kuptana is a longtime member of the Olokhaktomiut Hunters & Trappers Organization. He is also one of the few living people to ever shoot a Nanugluk polar-grizzly bear hybrid (Genome Prairie, 2019).

TACSI focuses on three areas: enabling the growth of Indigenous-led and cross-cultural, community-based wildlife monitoring programs that lead to a more resilient Arctic; using the knowledge gained to influence existing conservation decision-making frameworks; and understanding how non-invasive wildlife research techniques fit with Arctic Indigenous peoples’ worldview and their own approaches to knowledge generation.

Douglas Clark is working with northern communities to co-produce and co-evaluate ways to put cutting-edge, non-invasive tools into community hands.

Wild About Wolves

Sign installed at trailhead at Pacific Rim National Park Reserve (Parks Canada, 2020).

The Wild About Wolves project is a 5-year project led by Pacific Rim National Park Reserve aimed at fostering coexistence between humans and wolves in the National Park Reserve region. This project is being moved forward by project collaborators, including: park staff and management, local Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations, nearby municipalities, researchers, provincial government, and more. Collaborators have already identified key project research needs and priorities to advance this project.

Our role is to undertake the social science research needs identified by project collaborators. This includes engaging with a wide range of collaborators and community members to better understand and characterize human-wolf interactions in the area, and to determine how we might collaborative bring biological, social, and Indigenous knowledge together to advance coexistence between people and wolves in the western Vancouver Island region.

PhD student Ethan Doney is leading this work – please feel free to reach out to him if you have any questions or are looking to learn more about the project.

Wild About Wolves - Part 1: Re-Entering Pacific Rim National Park Reserve (Parks Canada, 2020)