UNB ACWERN Newsletter
Vol. 6 (Spring 2002)
Most of us here at UNB are gearing up for field seasons; however, there are a few things to report…
1. News from Tony
2. Post-docs and Current Students
3. Alumni News
4. Publications
5. Press Release from Hancock Land Company
In January, Tony started the first installment of a 2-part six-month 'sabbatical.'
He has reviewed a number of manuscripts for journals and completed one
book review and embarked on a second. Additionally, 2 papers have been
submitted (with students) and 2 more are very close to submission. In
late February Tony interrupted his sabbatical to join Graham Forbes in
teaching a new field course in tropical ecology in Belize. The course
was very successful and they hope to repeat it in future years. With Kate
Devlin and Sarah Jamieson he participated in the spring meeting of the
Gulf of Maine Seabird Working Group at Orland, ME on 18 March. He is due
for further knee surgery on 13 May so does not expect to be an active
participant in field projects this summer.
2) POST DOCS
& CURRENT STUDENTS:
Post-Doc Joël Bêty just found out that his paper, 'Are
goose nesting success and lemming cycles linked? Interplay between nest
density and predators' (Oikos. 2001. 93:388-400), is the recipient of
the Sixth Annual Arctic Research Consortium of the United States (ARCUS)
Award for Arctic Research Excellence in the category LIFE SCIENCES. With
this award comes a $500.00 cash prize ($U.S.!) that will be presented
at ARCUS¹ Fourteenth Annual Meeting and Arctic Forum in Washington,
DC, 15-17, May 2002. He is also invited to present his paper at the Arctic
Forum, an assembly on arctic research sponsored by ARCUS on 16-17 May
2002. Forum participants include arctic researchers representing many
disciplines, ARCUS¹ Board of Directors, ARCUS member institution
representatives, government officials, and funding agency staff. ARCUS
will pay all his expenses to attend the meeting. See http://www.arcus.org/annual_meeting
_02/index.html for more details. Congratulations Joël!!
NEAL SIMON successfully passed his qualifying examination in February
and ANDRE BRETON successfully passed his qualifying exam in April.
Congratulations!!
JOHN GUNN writes that the forestry company that he and PETER
MCKINLEY work for, Hancock Land Company has been 'Green' certified.
John and Pete were primarily responsible for developing the forest management
philosophy and on the ground management planning to achieve certification
- using of course all the knowledge acquired during their tenure at the
ACWERN lab! Congratulations!! See below for press release.
JOE NOCERA recently attended the joint meeting of the Wilson Ornithological
Society and Association of Field Ornithologists in Fort Myers, Florida
(April 11-14). He presented a poster, co-authored by Graham Forbes and
Randy Milton, entitled: "Habitat selection by grassland birds: Are
Ideal-free Distribution models missing vital parameters?" (abstract
below) Joe's Ph.D. proposal was recently successful in obtaining two new
research grants - one from the Canadian Wildlife Federation (as mentioned
in the winter newsletter), and another from the Nova Scotia Habitat Conservation
Fund. Congratulations Joe!
HABITAT SELECTION IN GRASSLAND BIRDS: A TEST OF THE IMPORTANCE OF PUBLIC
INFORMATION TO IDEAL-FREE DISTRIBUTION. Joseph J. Nocera* and Graham Forbes,
NB Coop Fish & Wildl. Res. Unit, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton,
NB, Canada, and G. Randy Milton, NS Dept. Nat. Res., Wildl. Div., Kentville,
NS, Canada.
Severe declines in many populations of grassland bird species have been
detected within the last few decades. For species of such conservation
concern, surprisingly little is known about what agricultural management
regimes best support populations of grassland birds and the habitat selection
processes that dictate distributional patterns in those agro-ecosystems.
The first model of these processes, on a landscape scale, was the Ideal-free
Distribution (IFD). The IFD has undergone many refinements and iterations,
but current IFD models still are not universally applicable and fail to
explain why animals seem to occupy decreasingly appropriate habitat patches
that are juxtaposed to higher quality territories, despite that more ideal,
unoccupied patches may be found in other disjoint, but equidistant, areas.
This poses a barrier to provision of nesting habitat, especially in systems
with significant direct management potential as with agro-ecosystems.
The underlying process of such 'anomalous' habitat selection has never
been addressed in current IFD models, and may be an important parameter.
I propose that this vital element of IFD is that of Public Information
(PI). PI is a foraging behaviour theory stating that animals will use
information gathered by observation of other members of a foraging flock
or group. This theory has never been considered in the context of IFD
and settlement patterns. In this presentation, I will describe my current
research, using grassland birds, to examine the role that PI plays in
determining habitat selection under IFD constraints, with consideration
of the conservation potential of future results.
BRENDA BLINN has taken a job in California for the summer and plans
to return to complete her writing in the fall.
DEDREIC GRECIAN took a contract with NB-DNRE on Harlequin Ducks
wintering on Grand Manan; he will return to thesis writing soon, and has
almost completed revisions on a manuscript on sexing adult Razorbills,
to be submitted shortly.
JILL BOUCHER is steadily analysing Tree Swallow nest-record data
and entering data on American Robins. She is also begun working part-time
for the NB Lung Association. She attended the EC-AR workshop on climate
change at Mount Allison U. in January.
SARAH JAMIESON was awarded the Vaughan Memorial Fellowship for
a second year in a row. Congratulations!!! She will spend a couple of
weeks in the Arctic before moving to Maine to spend the summer supervising
seabird work for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service on Petit Manan National
Wildlife Refuge (following in the footsteps of Rachel Bryant of ACWERN-MUN),
where she will become one of the collaborators in Kate Devlin's Arctic
Tern metapopulation project! She'll be back in Fredericton in the fall.
Undergraduates, CATHERINE OTOROWSKI and JEAN-MICHEL DE VINK
have both successfully completed their Honours/5th year theses. Jean-Michel
has been awarded an NSERC PGS-A Scholarship and will begin his masters
work next year. Congratulations to both of them!!
In March the Department of Biology and Faculty of Forestry and Environmental
Management hosted the annual Northeast Wildlife Graduate Student Conference.
Many folks in the lab organized and participated in the meeting including:
NIKKI BENJAMIN, BRENDA BLINN, ANDRE BRETON, KATE DEVLIN, MARK
DIONNE, SARAH JAMIESON, JOE NOCERA, TARA WARREN and LASHA YOUNG.
Presentations given included:
TEMPORAL AND SPATIAL PATTERNS IN ADULT SURVIVAL OF A LONG-LIVED SEABIRD,
THE ATLANTIC PUFFIN FRATERCULA ARCTIC, IN THE GULF OF MAINE. Andre R.
Breton, Antony W. Diamond and Stephen W. Kress.
TO TRAP OR NOT TO TRAP? THAT IS THE QUESTION. Kate Devlin and Tony Diamond.
THE IDEAL-FREE DISTRIBUTION - IT'S NOT FREE, BUT IS IT IDEAL? A TEST OF
THE IMPORTANCE OF PUBLIC INFORMATION USING SETTLEMENT PATTERNS IN GRASSLAND
BIRDS. Joseph Nocera.
Posters presented included:
ESTIMATING AGE-SPECIFIC SURVIVAL AND DISTRIBUTION OF EMIGRANTS BETWEEN
COLONIES OF ATLANTIC PUFFIN (FRATERCULA ARCTICA) IN THE GULF OF MAINE.
Andre R. Breton, Antony Diamond and Stephen W. Kress.
VARIATION IN BODY MASS OF COMMON EIDERS WINTERING IN THE EASTERN ARCTIC.
Sarah Jamieson, Grant Gilchrist and Tony Diamond.
Also attending the conference was Trina Fitzgerald from the Acadia ACWERN
node. Trina presented the following paper:
A NOVEL METHOD TO DETERMINE THE ORIENTATION OF MIGRATORY PASSERINES. Trina
Fitzgerald and Philip D. Taylor.
FALK HUETTMANN has moved to the Geography Department at the University
of Calgary where he has won a Killham Postodoctoral Research Fellowship.
DOROTHY MCFARLANE writes that as of February her job search ended
- she now is an Air Quality Researcher for the International Centre for
Air Quality and Human Health Information, located in Fredericton within
the offices of the NB Lung Association. Not a bird-related job, but at
least it is science. She is also looking forward to continuing her MAPS
banding station in Fundy, doing 4 BBS routes, teaching a BIRD ID course
at UNB, and writing a chapter on bird biodiversity in the Atlantic Ecozone
for EMAN, and learning more about plants as a member of the NB Botany
Society.
CAM STEVENS writes that he has passed his comprehensive exams and
is heading into another field season. He and Tony are still collaborating
on work from his masters thesis and have recently submitted a paper to
Ecoscience titled: 'Waterbird communities on restored small wetlands in
Prince Edward Island, Canada.'
JULIE PAQUET returned from India and Nepal in February and has
kept busy giving talks about her travels to Rotary Clubs and local naturalist
groups. She is continuing as Wildlife Technician at the Canadian Wildlife
Service in Sackville and is currently devoting all her spare time to developing
a Sustainable Living Demonstration Center: the Nappan Project (www3.ns.sympatico.ca/nappan
project). She now lives in Nappan, Nova Scotia with her partner Jason
in a little wood house in the forest (finally, a permanent field camp!).
Please come visit if you're ever passing through!
JEFF HOYT after completing his honours project at UNB in 1996 went
on to complete his M.Sc. at U. of Alberta. He is now a biologist for the
Species at Risk Program with the Fish & Wildlife Branch of the Department
of Natural Resources and Energy in Fredercton, N.B. he can be reached
at: (506)453-2440 or email: Jeff.Hoyt@gnb.ca.
Bêty, J., Gauthier, G., Korpimäki, E., and Giroux, J.-F. 2002.
Shared predators and indirect trophic interactions: lemming cycles and
arctic-nesting geese. Journal of Animal Ecology 71: 88-98.
Mainguy, J., Bêty, J., Gauthier, G., and Giroux, J.-F. 2002. Are
body condition and reproductive effort of laying Greater Snow Geese affected
by the spring hunt? Condor 104: 156-162.
Stevens, C. E., Diamond, A.W. and Gabor, T.S. 2002. Anuran call surveys
on small wetlands in Prince Edward Island, Canada restored by dredging
of sediments. Wetlands 22(1): 90-99.
5) PRESS RELEASE: HANCOCK
LAND COMPANY
NATIONAL WILDLIFE FEDERATION®
People and Nature: Our Future Is in the Balance™
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Contacts:
April 23, 2002 Stacy Brown, NWF, 802/229-0650
John Gunn, Hancock Land Company, 207/627-7764
Hancock Land Company Forest Management Practices FSC-Certified
MONTPELIER, VT - The National Wildlife Federation (NWF) announced today
that 22,000 acres of forestland in Cumberland, Oxford, and Androscoggin
counties in Maine, owned and managed by Hancock Land Company have been
SmartWood™-certified as "well-managed" according to the
criteria of the internationally-recognized Forest Stewardship Council
(FSC). Working with the Rainforest Alliance's SmartWood program, NWF performs
forest certification assessments in the northeastern United States.
"The certification of Hancock Land Company's forest management demonstrates
its commitment to managing forestlands to high environmental and sustainable
forest management principles," said Eric Palola, NWF's Northeast
Natural Resource Center director. "This assessment confirms Hancock
Land Company's ability to simultaneously meet multiple forest management
objectives including: the protection of water quality, rare ecosystems,
and wildlife habitat needs of Northern Forest species such as black bear,
marten and moose; the education of community members and school children
on forest management challenges and issues; and the generation of a significant
wood harvest."
Hancock Land Company is southern Maine's largest landowner, and has a
history of forest management that spans six generations of the Hancock
family. The certified forestland includes the first parcel purchased by
the company in 1848, as well as thousands of acres acquired more recently
under the leadership of Matt Hancock. Hancock Land is actively looking
for opportunities to increase the amount of forestland managed under FSC
standards in southern Maine. In addition to managing its own forestlands,
Hancock Land Company offers forest management services for private landowners.
Hancock Land Company's certification as a Resource Manager allows them
to offer other landowners an opportunity to participate in FSC certification
through Hancock Land Company's stewardship forestry program.
"We're proud to have our ecologically-based approach to forest management
recognized by the SmartWood program. The independent certification of
our management practices serves to re-affirm our commitment to the stewardship
of the Hancock family's land, and our overall commitment to sustainable
forestry in the Northern Forest." John Gunn, V.P. Conservation and
Land Management, Hancock Land Company.
To become certified the forest management conducted by Hancock Land Company
had to meet more than 50 rigorous criteria that ensure that forests are
managed for long-term ecological, social, and economic health. Certified
forests must successfully balance long-term timber production with the
maintenance of critical wildlife habitat, forest biodiversity, watershed
protection, and other important ecological functions. NWF organized and
led the three-member team of independent SmartWood auditors who spent
a week assessing the forest management activities through site visits,
consultation with stakeholders familiar with Hancock Land Company's forest
management programs, and review of management plans and maps.
In addition to undertaking an FSC certification assessment, Hancock Land
Company has also actively sought opportunities to partner with local and
national land trusts and conservation organizations to permanently protect
working forests through conservation easements. In recent years, Hancock
Land Company has been involved in several land purchases with conservation
easement components that have allowed them to expand their land base while
simultaneously guaranteeing a forested future for lands under easement
in an area facing rapid development pressures.
The National Wildlife Federation is the nation's largest member-supported
conservation advocacy and education group, uniting people from all walks
of life to protect nature, wildlife, and the world we all share. Working
with the FSC-accredited SmartWood program, NWF has certified forest landowners
and companies across the northeastern U.S., involving more than 1 million
forested acres. Visit NWF at www.nwf.org
The SmartWood™ Program of the Rainforest Alliance is the oldest not-for-profit
certifier accredited by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). SmartWood
partners with a network of regional non-profit conservation organizations,
including NWF's regional office in Montpelier, VT, to perform its certification
work. SmartWood has certified over 6 million acres of forestland globally.
Information on SmartWood can be found at www.smartwood.org
The Forest Stewardship Council is an international non-profit organization
founded to support environmentally appropriate, socially beneficial, and
economically viable management of the world's forests through independent
forest management certification and marketplace labeling of certified
forest products. FSC has operations in over forty countries worldwide,
including a US office located in Washington D.C, and serves as formal
accreditor of forest certification programs such as SmartWood, ensuring
consistent performance. More than 67 million acres of forestlands have
been certified globally according to FSC standards. Information on the
FSC can be found at www.fscus.org.
