NIKI WILSON – On Science, Jasper Fitzhugh April 11, 2013 University of Calgary researcher Colleen Arnison holds her binoculars to her eyes and peers into the pine and Douglas fir forest before us. She keeps a well-trained eye on a female mule deer that has just been darted by Geoff Skinner, human-wildlife conflict specialist with Parks Canada. The deer’s muted brown colouring makes it difficult to see in the dappled morning light. This is how deer hide from predators, and also how they make this kind of operation tricky. The tranquilizing drugs take effect slowly. Joined by project volunteer Jerry Duhamel and park official A.L. Horton, the team are like covert operatives silently closing the…

NIKI WILSON – On Science, Jasper Fitzhugh March 14, 2013 Recently, a fellow insect enthusiast (that’s you Sue Young-Leslie) sent me a message asking about “those winter spiders” she’s been seeing around. You know the ones, most frequently seen dragging their sluggish, segmented rears across the snow pack on warm winter days. I’m not afraid to admit that bug identification makes my toes tingle, so naturally I dropped everything to find out what it was. After photo confirmation, we decided Sue was talking about the wingless winter cousin of the summer cranefly, ingeniously called the snow cranefly. It’s easy to mistake these guys for spiders, given the way they creep along. Around here they’re usually…

NIKI WILSON – On Science, Jasper Fitzhugh February 14, 2013 According  to her GPS, field assistant Laura Machial was standing in the exact location where, months earlier, her team had attached a remote wildlife camera to a burnt tree snag. But as she shuffled her skis back and forth along the snowy trail, she saw no sign of it. Still in cell range, she called her boss, University of Montana PhD student Robin Steenweg. After a brief video-conference that included a scan of the area, he confirmed she was in the right place. They decided she should start digging. Eventually she located the camera, but not exactly as the team had left it. “She found…

On Science   The Fitzhugh, January 10, 2013 By Niki Wilson   2013 is the International Year of Water Co-operation, as voted by the United Nations General Assembly. This designation aims to draw attention to countries that have committed to protecting freshwater resources, and to encourage them to start taking concrete actions to protect and share this increasingly valuable resource. Access to freshwater, and its key role in healthy ecosystems, may be the biggest global issue in the decades to come. This idea is hard to absorb when you live in a place like Jasper National Park. Here, the Athabasca River rushes by, rising and subsiding with the seasons. One only needs to walk a…

NIKI WILSON – On Science December 06, 2012   It’s the end of November, and I don’t know about you, but I’m a little bit sleepy. There are days I feel like I could curl up and doze until the sun starts hanging around a little longer. Some days it’s tempting, but to be honest, I’m only good for about eight hours of lying around before body parts start to ache and I need some pancakes. Bears don’t have this problem. They shut down their biological business for five to seven months of winter hibernation every year, without eating, drinking, defecating or urinating. Researchers have long been intrigued by these abilities, and have studied hibernation…