THE BIWEEKLY

AUGUST 1, 2025

Published by the Alberta Society of Professional Biologists

AUGUST

Wetlands in the Boreal Transition Zone

On August 12 and 13, in Lac La Biche, AB, Ducks Unlimited Canada and the Lakeland Industry and Community Association (LICA) are teaming up to host

Wetlands in the Boreal Transition Zone, an exciting two-day workshop all about wetlands in the Beaver River Watershed! Registration for this free workshop can be found HERE.

TRAINING PROVIDERS

NATURAL RESOURCES

TRAINING GROUP

•  Electrofishing Certification - Online (self-paced) & Cochrane, August 15th, 2025

https://nrtraininggroup.com/events/electrofishing-certification-online-self-paced-cochrane-august-15th-2025/?datetime=865

• Electrofishing Certification - Online (self-paced) & Kamloops, August 19th, 2025

https://nrtraininggroup.com/events/electrofishing-certification-online-self-paced-kamloops-august-19th-2025/?datetime=882

For the full calendar of upcoming courses, and course details, follow this link:

https://nrtraininggroup.com/schedule/

KEEPING TRACK

with

FIERA BIOLOGICAL CONSULTING

Track & Sign OnLine – Study Session, Aug. 26, 2025.

6pm MDT | 2-hours | Online via Zoom 

The study session will focus on impactful tracking tips aimed at improving performance at a future Track & Sign Certification, or give you a jump start at one of our other in-person tracking workshops.

Open to anyone interested — you do not have to be signed up for a Certification or in-person workshop to participate.

Learn more and register here 

Track & Sign Certification – Sep. 9 & 10, 2025, Hinton, Alberta

Hinton Area | September 9 & 10, 2025 | Ages 18+ | Register before September 1 | Limited Space

This 2-day field-based workshop in Alberta’s wildlife rich foothills offers the opportunity for participants to earn certifications in Track & Sign from Levels 1 to Professional (Level 4). This is an extremely challenging and engaging workshop designed to find the edges of your abilities and propel you past them. Participants must obtain at least 70% during the evaluation — 

All abilities welcome.

Learn more and register here

The Wildlife Society Conference One-day Track & Sign Certification Workshop — Oct. 5, 2025, Edmonton 

Attendees of The Wildlife Society Conference in Edmonton, AB, from October 5 to 8, 2025, have the option of attending at a reduced rate. 

Join us for a one-day (8-hour) tracking certification workshop that will include an examination of wildlife tracks and sign, interpretation of wildlife movement and behaviour from tracks, and much more! Register through The Wildlife Society Conference website.

Learn more here 

Track & Sign Certification — Feb. 7 & 8, 2026, Prince Albert National Park, Saskatchewan

Ages 18+ | Register by Jan. 18 | Limited space

Join us for this exploration of Saskatchewan’s boreal forests, frozen lakes, and snow-covered wetlands through the lens of wildlife track & sign identification and interpretation. This 2-day field-based workshop offers participants the opportunity to earn certifications in Track & Sign, ranging from Level 1 to Professional (Level 4). All abilities welcome.

Learn more and register here

Track & Sign Specialist Certification — May 23 & 24, 2026, Lardeau Valley, British Columbia

This 2-day field-based workshop offers participants the opportunity to earn a Track & Sign Specialist Certification, the highest level of Track & Sign certification available within the CyberTracker system. Sage Raymond and David Moskowitz will lead the Workshop. This workshop is meant for expert trackers.

Learn more here

AAFMP

Association of Alberta Forest Management Professionals

Professional Development Events for Natural Resource Professionals

The Effectiveness of Public Participation

Through forest advisory committees

Lessons from Ontario - Webinar (free)

Date: September 16, 2025

Speakers: Lance Robinson and Jeff Robinson

Registrationlink: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/MTPA3HziSMi7SgokbeYEyg#/registration

ESTI

The Environmental Sciences Training Institute

Please contact efishing@esticanada.com with any questions or to book a custom delivery. Learn about our Efishing program here. 

View our in-person course calendar at

https://esticanada.com/shop/

Nest Sweep Protocol: Online – Self-Paced

Online Courses

SALMTEC

 COURSES AND TRAINING PROGRAMS

******

NEW! OnDemand Seminar – Catchment Delineation

https://salmtec.com/product/catchment-delineation/

Fall 2025 Offering - ABWRET-A (F25) Blended Course

https://salmtec.com/product/abwret-blended-course/

Fall 2025 Offering – GVI (F25) Blended Course

https://salmtec.com/product/gvi-course/

Registration Now Open for SALMTEC's ABWRET-A Blended Course (W25) Offering Online,

Registration Now Open for SALMTEC's Grassland Vegetation Inventory (GVI) Blended Course (W25) Offering Online,

Registration Now Open for SALMTEC's Catchment Delineation Seminar

SALMTEC also offers several self-paced courses:

Wetland Policy Basics 

Understanding ACIMS Tools 

Alberta Soil Information Viewer 

SALMTEC offers On-Demand seminars:

Land Use Assessment 

Technical Report Review 

Landscape Analysis 

Hydrology & Wetland Design

Wetland Delineation

VISIT THE SALMTEC CONNECTOR 

THE SALMTEC CONNECTOR is a compilation of applied science and land management event listings, across a variety of sectors and disciplines, published monthly.

You can find the SALMTEC CONNECTOR HERE.

OUR PEOPLE

AND A HALF-CENTURY

OF

EXCELLENCE

This year, we celebrate the ASPB's fiftieth anniversary, serving our profession together with all the people who live and work in Alberta. As our province has grown, so has membership in our society, which currently sits at over 3000 registered professionals.

Over the next six months, the ASPB staff and board have committed to talking about our ASPB people, celebrating their commitment and service to our society, the profession, and our province. We will endeavour to carry at least two or three short personal histories - and maybe even some photos - in each edition of THE BIWEEKLY, through December 2025. (They will be presented in no particular order!)

Clifford Wallis

Clifford Wallis first became a member of the ASPB in 1980. Professionally, he continues to be President of Cottonwood Consultants Ltd., which was incorporated in 1978, and personally he continues to do nature photography and volunteers for conservation many conservation organizations, including the Alberta Wilderness Association, the Milk River Management Society, the Great Plains Conservation Network, the Canada working group for the Central Grasslands Roadmap, the core team for the Transboundary Grassland Partnership, and the organizing committee for the Wild Buffalo Summit.

Clifford is involved in a variety of biological field work on grasslands, wetlands, and species at risk, as well as acting as an expert advisor to landowners, Indigenous Peoples, and NGOs in regulatory hearings and legal proceedings. He writes of early days at the ASPB: “I remember my first discussions with Robin Leech in the 1970s when he was establishing the ASPB with other colleagues. We both worked for the Alberta government; he sold me on the need for a professional body and ultimately convinced me to join. When ASPB was first recognized in legislation and I received the formal designation of P. Biol. in March 1991, it was a moment of great pride, having official recognition as a Professional Biologist, and just two years later receiving the Peggy Thompson Award."

Clifford has also received regional and national conservation awards from the Alberta Wilderness Association, Prairie Conservation and Endangered Species Conference, Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, and Nature Canada, as well as being appointed a Member of the Order of Canada in 2023.

"These awards recognize my work on nature conservation," Clifford notes, "(but) it is the people I work with every day that bring joy and meaning to my work.”

Lorne Fitch

Lorne Fitch writes that he is still a practicing biologist (and has been a member of the ASPB since 1977!)

Lorne served Albertans as a provincial fish and wildlife biologist (1971-2006), a provincial riparian specialist for Cows and Fish (2006- 2017), and was an adjunct professor with the University of Calgary from 2004 to 2018). He continues to be an advocate for fish and wildlife populations and their habitats, writing extensively on conservation issues and has published three books on conservation topics: Streams of Consequence - Dispatches from the Conservation World, Travels Up the Creek - A Biologist’s Search for a Paddle, and Conservation Confidential- A Biologist Investigates the Clash Between Progress and Nature.

In his own words, “I have had a wonderful career as a biologist and continue to give back with my writing and mentorship of younger biologists. I would say being a biologist has been more of an avocation than a vocation, perhaps even a calling. It has, at times, been stressful, in the sense from Aldo Leopold that “One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds.” There is a constant tug on one’s professional ethics and the role of the ASPB, for me, was to create a firewall of the code of ethics to avoid being forced to make inappropriate ecological choices in endless land use debates.

That remains the biggest challenge for biologists today, to provide truth to power and avoid being an enabler for inappropriate decisions.

At the ASPB, we regularly receive notifications from Google Scholar and other sources which we select and share below in the BIWEEKLY. Here is the latest batch (the links are HOT):



How AI can help protect bees from dangerous parasites

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-atrum-coal-alberta-lawsuit-settlement/

Biology is complex and diverse, so scientific research approaches need to be too

‘Under the law I am not an expert’

Majority of fruit fly research is sound

Vulnerable caribou and moose populations display varying responses to mountain pine beetle outbreaks and management

Limited impacts of simulated soil disturbance by rewilded vertebrates on above‐and below‐ground biodiversity

Ărramăt Model–Global Indigenous-Led Research for Biodiversity Conservation and Indigenous Health and Well-being

Identifying anthropogenic and fixed influencing factors of shrub encroachment in Cypress Upland, Canada

Assessing pathogen risk for wild bumblebees (Bombus spp., Apidae) in Canada

The North American Gap Ungulates Must Migrate Physically and Legally: Elk as a Case Study

Let the river run

bisonpicsuite: A set of R packages to estimate wood bison population parameters from remote camera data.

A Comparison of Activity Patterns of Bats and Birds Near Wind Turbines Using Thermal Videography, Doppler Radar, and Ultrasonic Acoustics

There’s a new acid in our rain

Jurisdictional scan of strategies for mitigating elk-agriculture conflict. Prepared for British Columbia Ministry of Agriculture and Food, Victoria, Canada.

US is out of UNESCO … again

Bad Nature: How Rat Control Shapes Human and Nonhuman Worlds, by Andrew McCumber

Life finds a way... to become an anteater!

Optimized Method for Cultivation and Microbial Bioaugmentation of Typha latifolia (Cattail)

Do harvest retention patches in the boreal forest emulate those resulting from wildfire? A comparison of understory vegetation a decade after disturbance

Female and male grizzly bears differ in their responses to low‐intensity recreation in a protected area

Potential impacts of 2.3. 4.4 b highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza virus infection on Snow Goose (Anser caerulescens) movement ecology

2025 CONFERENCE SPONSORS

This week’s banner photo:

It's all fun and games...

...for this young Cross Fox.

Taken on the Arctic Tundra with a smartphone

by biologist Sandra Scott

PROFESSIONAL BIOLOGISTS PROTECT THE PUBLIC INTEREST

In Alberta, Professional Biologists are registrants of the Alberta Society of Professional Biologists (ASPB), and are subject to a code of ethics, continuing competency requirements, and a disciplinary process. The ASPB is a self-regulated organization under legislation in the Province of Alberta, meaning its purpose is to protect the public of Alberta by ensuring biologists are qualified to practice biology in accordance with that legislation. The society is governed by a Board of Directors elected by its registrants.

You are probably receiving this newsletter because you are an ASPB Registrant. This newsletter provides relevant information and professional development opportunities for our members, as well as essential member-related society business; if you are registered with the Alberta Society of Professional Biologists, please DO NOT unsubscribe.

For more information about the Society or to contact the administration, please visit the website: https://www.aspb.ab.ca

Opinions and general news published in this e-newsletter

do not necessarily reflect the opinions or policies of the Society or its Board of Directors.

2025