Latest / Ducks Unlimited Podcast / RELOADED EP288 | Wildfire & Duck Science in the Boreal Forest

Transcript

RELOADED EP288 | Wildfire & Duck Science in the Boreal Forest · Ducks Unlimited Podcast

• 0:03
  VO: Welcome to the Ducks Unlimited podcast, Reloaded. We bring you the best of our past episodes. Whether you're a seasoned waterfowler or curious about conservation, this series is for you. Over the years, we've had incredible guests and discussions about everything from wetland conservation to the latest waterfowl research and hunting strategies. In Reloaded, we're revisiting those conversations to keep the passion alive and the mission strong.
• 0:28
  So sit back, relax, and enjoy this reload.
• 0:35
  Mike Brasher: Everybody, welcome back to the Ducks Unlimited podcast. We are back with another discussion with one of our Ducks Unlimited research fellowship recipients to discuss some of the latest science that Ducks Unlimited is supporting as well as to introduce you to one of the young scientists that Ducks Unlimited is investing in. So I am happy today to welcome our guest, Moriah Tange, a master of science candidate from the University of Saskatchewan. Moriah, welcome to the podcast.
• 1:00
  Moriah Tange: Thank you for having me.
• 1:01
  Mike Brasher: We always give folks an opportunity at the outset here to introduce themselves to our audience, both from a personal standpoint as well as professional, so I will extend to you that very same opportunity. Tell us a little bit about yourself, where you grew up, what your interests are, how you made your way to a graduate project studying ducks and wetlands.
• 1:22
  Moriah Tange: Sure. So yeah. So I'm currently finishing up my master of science degree in waterfowl ecology at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, and I'm originally from Interior British Columbia. I completed my undergraduate degree in biology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. And, yeah, during during my degree, I participated in a work co op program, and it was through this program that I happened to get a job as a summer waterfowl technician with the Canadian Wildlife Service.
• 1:49
  And so this was my introduction to the duck world. After that job in 2015, I was pretty much hooked, and almost all my positions since then have been related to wetland and waterfowl science and conservation, mostly in the Western Boreal Forest. So, yeah, after a couple of really fun field seasons doing, yeah, duck work on the ground, I decided to advance my career in waterfowl ecology, and I began my master's degree in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
• 2:16
  Mike Brasher: Growing up, did you have any particular story that that stands out to you that that allowed you to develop a connection with the natural world that sort of set you on your path, you know, to to your your chosen field in in undergraduate? Anything stick out from your youthful years?
• 2:32
  Moriah Tange: Yeah. Well, yeah, where I grew up is it's sort of just a small ski town. Started as a mining town. It's just tiny, it's, like, nestled in the Selkirk Mountains, part of the Rocky Mountain Chain. So that outdoors is basically it's just an integral integral part of the culture here.
• 2:50
  So there's definitely there's not one single time where I connected with nature. That that connection's just sort of always been there growing up. But my interest in birds happened, like, a lot later, more in undergrad. Basically, yeah, just one bird course with a really great professor kind of got me got me going on it. There was even a field kind of course component to it.
• 3:10
  Really, a great professor makes all the difference, I think, in being exposed to new topics.
• 3:15
  Mike Brasher: If you don't mind me asking, can you can you tell us who that professor was?
• 3:19
  Moriah Tange: Yeah. Was doctor Darren Irwin at UBC.
• 3:22
  Mike Brasher: Okay. I'm sure he would appreciate the shout out there. So so kudos to to to him and all the other great professors out there that have inspired young scientists such as yourself along the way, so that's pretty cool. And then and then you made your way to the University of Saskatchewan, here more recently, and tell me about your adviser. Who's your adviser there now or has been?
• 3:45
  Moriah Tange: Yeah. Doctor Kirsty Gurney, and she's actually a research scientist with Environment and Climate Change Canada. So she's an adjunct professor at the University of Saskatchewan.
• 3:55
  Mike Brasher: I was wondering if doctor Bob Clark had had any I'm not sure if he served on your committee or may still be serving on you. Do you have him, any connection with him there at University of Saskatchewan? I know he's retired now, but he is certainly a prominent figure within the waterfowl world, and so I was just curious.
• 4:11
  Moriah Tange: Absolutely. Yeah. I was lucky enough to overlap a little bit with him in the in the same office. And, actually, he was the one who connected me with with, doctor Gurney. So I I originally emailed him because sort of a well known name.
• 4:25
  Oh, I I should email Bob Clark if I'm looking for a for a thesis program. And, and yeah. But that was late coming coming toward his retirement, he wasn't taking on new students. So he he referred me to Kirsty, and she is actually a past PhD student of Bob's, so there's that sort of lineage there. Yep.
• 4:43
  Mike Brasher: Yeah. We've talked about that often, and so it's pretty cool to hear about it again here. So we'll move on now to talk about you, and as a recipient of one of these Ducks Unlimited fellowships, we had, I think, three or four people on the podcast last year starting, you know, in in fall and winter of, I guess, that would have been 2021, and so we're gonna be doing the same thing this year. You are the first of the recipients that we have, you know, thus far interviewed for this season, and so you, in particular, are the recipient of the Ducks Unlimited Canada MBNA Canada Bank Conservation Fellowship. And a little bit about this fellowship, it's sponsored by one of our long term partners with Ducks Unlimited Canada, and the objective for this this fellowship is to develop talented young professionals dedicated to furthering conservation of wetlands and waterfowl and other wildlife, and to advance our scientific understanding of of waterfowl wetland biology in Canada.
• 5:40
  Particular, I think this is the fellowship that's open and that caters to applicants, Canadian citizen applicants, so that's one of the more unique aspects of this particular fellowship. So congratulations to you, Moriah, on being the recipient of this. And if I'm I remember correctly, is this the second year that you've been the recipient of that fellowship? Yeah. So at this point, I will ask you to start introducing your research.
• 6:09
  You know, we've talked a little bit about your personal and professional background, what brought you to the University of Saskatchewan, and of course, now we want to we want to focus a little bit on learning what you've what you've been studying, what this what this fellowship and all the other important funders of this research have been trying to learn alongside you. So give us sort of at a at a high level a an introduction to the research question that you were trying to address.
• 6:38
  Moriah Tange: Sure. So habitat changes in the Boreal Forest might be affecting a couple of North American species of waterfowl. Especially important or of particular concern right now are SCOTRS and SCOP, but the habitat needs for these species are not very well understood. So it can be difficult to manage their habitat, in their core breeding areas in the Boreal Forest because we just know so so little about those habitat needs. Some of these characteristics of their habitats might include the community composition of their aquatic invertebrate prey and how these communities might change following natural disturbances like forest fire.
• 7:14
  And another factor that might be important is the landscape surrounding the wetlands that they breed on in the Boreal Forest. And so there are limited studies on these topics. Some of them have inconsistent outcomes, and so questions surrounding these topics are fairly unresolved. So the broad objective of my research is to inform land use planning decisions in boreal forest by addressing unresolved questions surrounding responses of boreal wetland macroinvertebrate prey communities to forest fires and better identifying habitat characteristics important to boreal nesting, white winged scoter, surf scoter, and lesser scotch. So I I begin to meet this objective in the Ramparts River Wetlands, which is a large wetland complex located in the Northwest Territories in an area called the Central Mackenzie Valley.
• 8:05
  Mike Brasher: So, Moriah, I wanna ask you a few questions here. The, you know, Western Boreal Forest has certainly been something we've talked a fair bit about this year as the the Prairies are going through some drought. A lot of our attention, a lot of our a lot of our discussions have necessarily focused on the the Western Boreal Forest and the important role that it plays in supporting waterfowl populations on a year over year basis, but certainly in years when the prairies go dry, the importance of the Boreal Forest is amplified. So this is a a pretty neat opportunity to hear about some of the research that's actually occurring there to help us, in fact, learn more about the different different ways that that interactions on the landscape affect duck populations, particular duck species there. Mhmm.
• 8:50
  So this is, you know, you grew up, I think you were you were saying, in Interior British Columbia, I remember that right? Exactly. Yeah. And so you've, if I'm not mistaken, that's prob that's gonna be a pretty forested landscape in itself. Right?
• 9:04
  It is. Yeah. So so you've been around these massive Canadian forests your entire life, and so from your perspective, maybe for some of our listeners that aren't as familiar with it, that might have that might appreciate a mental image, can you try to give us one of those? What are we talking about when we what should we be thinking about, maybe is the way to say it, when people talk about the Boreal Forest? What's the best way to envision this massive landscape that you've that you've kinda helped study over the past few years?
• 9:33
  Moriah Tange: So it depends a little bit where you are. So my research is in the northern part of of of the biome, so kind of particularly in the Taiga Plains, it's called. So in that area, it's very untouched, in general, especially where we were doing research in terms of industrial development, kind of urban centers, things like that. It is just very remote and wild still. So if you fly over regions like this, if you're lucky enough to get that chance, you just see it's just swaths of mostly coniferous forest stands mixed in with tons of wetlands, lakes, ponds, rivers.
• 10:13
  So so, yeah, it's this mosaic of lots of water and lots of forest.
• 10:17
  Mike Brasher: So as you're talking, I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna skip around and ask you some questions that that maybe I'd originally planned on asking them later, but you've kinda touched on them, so I want to explore them a little bit more right now. You talk about the remoteness of this landscape. So, you know, instinctively, I wonder what it was like, what you had to go through in order to access your study sites, and kinda talk about, like, how remote are we talking? Were you able to drive in there? How close could you get?
• 10:44
  Did you have to fly in? Were you stationed at some remote research camp, or are there some kinda outpost cities or towns where you were able to stay? Give us some idea of what it's like being a researcher in that type of landscape.
• 10:58
  Moriah Tange: Sure. Yeah. So in our case, we were very dependent on a local community there called Forked Hope. So this is predominantly indigenous community, and they yeah. So we rented space from them to live while doing the research, usually about a week at a time.
• 11:15
  We'd go out for visits. And we also worked with people in the community to carry out the sampling that we did there. The community and the specific folks that we worked with really make this work possible. So and we were also lucky enough to have funding on this project to access those sites by helicopter. So that's often one of the only ways to get a big enough sample in these regions to really do robust science on what's going on with ducks there.
• 11:43
  But, of course, we there's lots of important information that we can only get doing on the ground studies as well. And that's where it it does get pretty pretty tough going. It's a hard place to move around in. So, for example, I did some work, further south in sort of North Central Alberta, still in the Boreal Forest. In that area, the industrial development level is is much higher.
• 12:07
  So there are access roads around there that you you can get trucks down in good weather, but for duck work, you're often there in May and June, and the rains become heavy, and then these some of these roads become impassable. So it still involved a lot of hiking, and so and it's, really wet terrain and densely vegetated terrain. So it is yeah. It's not it's not easy work, but it's very rewarding, because of just the the stunning nature of these landscapes.
• 12:37
  Mike Brasher: Yeah. You shared with me, I think it was sometime last year, a couple of photos from your fieldwork, and I think both of those included the helicopter that you were talking about. One of those showed you that was, I think the helicopter had kinda sat down on one of these remote wetlands, and it has, like, floats. Right? The helicopter has some type of float on it, and the the the helicopter had sat down on the wetland, and and you were kinda kneeling over collecting a water sample still in in your aviation gear, and so I'm, you know, you just I'm guessing you just kinda hop from wetland to wetland to in the helicopter in order to collect the data, and then I think the other image was showing a refueling site for the helicopter.
• 13:22
  One of the things that that probably isn't intuitive as people kind of think about how you would get around and the necessities of getting around is that you have to I'm guessing they have to transport in large stores of aviation fuel to a you know, in in closer proximity to the study site. Is that what I was seeing?
• 13:40
  Moriah Tange: Exactly. Yeah. So it's that's another one of sort of the challenges of working there is these logistical challenges. So this this community that we were based out of is a is a fly in community kind of in the summer months. In the winter months, they actually have an ice road connecting them to more southern places, and that's how a lot of our supplies got shipped up there.
• 14:03
  So it takes a lot of preplanning and, yeah, logistical details have to be in place to really carry out these projects.
• 14:20
  VO: Stay tuned to the Ducks Unlimited podcast, sponsored by Purina Pro Plan and Bird Dog Whiskey after these messages.
• 14:36
  Mike Brasher: That's pretty cool and certainly a landscape that I've not had much experience in, so maybe I'll change that one of these days. I say that about a lot of areas, I think, but I guess as I have visited a number of landscapes, but there still are are quite a few that I've not not stepped foot in, and and so, you know, I I worked in the parkland and right on the fringe of that boreal forest, but certainly not at those more remote locations, so there's there's a big part of me that's that's envious of the opportunity that presented you. I'm sure there's a ton of stories that we could explore there, and I'll ask you later on some of your favorite memories, the more favored, you know, experiences from working in that location, but for now, let's move on a little bit to talk about your research in a bit more detail, and so tell us, I guess, the key pieces of data for for the key questions that you were trying to answer. What were the key pieces of data that you had to collect, and then how did you go about that?
• 15:33
  Moriah Tange: Sure. Yeah. So I'll I'll start with the sort of habitat selection piece with the SCOTRS and SCOP. So that for that chapter, I, was lucky enough to use some aerial survey data that had already been collected actually by the Canadian Wildlife Service based out of their office in in Yellowknife. And so that was, yeah, aerial surveys conducted by helicopter.
• 15:57
  And in those surveys, they just basically counted the abundance of breeding pairs of white winged scoters and surf scoters as well as lesser scot, in in the study area, the ramparts. In in my research, I was linking those counts with, landscape characteristics. So things like the the area and coverage of water bodies and wetland on the land landscape or the proportion of areas surrounding a pond that's covered in coniferous forest. So characteristics like that. Those I got from, basically, GIS or aerial imagery sources.
• 16:36
  So those were done sort of, collected remotely. So then I I related those sets of variables to look at which variables, which landscape characteristics tend to correlate with ponds that have scoters and scab.
• 16:53
  Mike Brasher: What can you tell me about and this may be an impossible question to answer, but I'm gonna do it anyway. What can you tell me about, like, the the number of ducks that you see across the landscape? What was what would be a and and I know this is contingent upon wetland size, but if you had a a 10 hectare, or what would that be, like, 20 or so acre wetland, like, what's what's the number of duct that you're gonna see on that? I'm trying to kind of frame frame this in my mind relative to some of what I understand about the prairies having worked there because you can drive around and you can see birds flying up across the landscape, and you'll have a pair or so on each little small potholes, but but the potholes are numerous, and there are ducks all over the place. What's the density of ducks in the Boreal Forest in the best way you can describe it relative to the prairies?
• 17:42
  Moriah Tange: Sure. Yeah. So they are at lower densities in the Boreal, generally. Yeah. So on surveys, on nest searches, you'll notice that they're spread sort of more diffusely.
• 17:54
  That said, you'll still get some really busy wetlands. I know that that the survey crews even had wetlands in the ramparts where there were so many scap that they had to decide to not differentiate between lesser scap and greater scap at a certain point because it just became overwhelming and too time consuming because you're spending fuel that whole time. So, yeah, there's still a range, but overall, less dense than the prairies.
• 18:20
  Mike Brasher: So I apologize for kinda interrupting you and and maybe causing you to lose your train of thought there as I was asking you to describe the study at the data you were collecting, but I just kinda had to jump over there and ask that question because I'm trying to, again, develop some visual picture of some of the data that you're collecting. And so those you you as you said, measured some of those landscape variables, but then you also collected data at the individual wetland level. Right? Kind of this idea that ducks may be influenced. They may make decisions if we can go that far.
• 18:52
  They may make decisions on what they do and which wetlands they use based on characteristics that are at this landscape scale as well as at the local, like, wetland specific scale. Right? Didn't you collect some data at that level?
• 19:03
  Moriah Tange: Exactly. Yeah. So at a sort of finer scale, I looked at, yeah, the the food source, basically, for these ducks. So that is wetland macroinvertebrate species. So and I wanted to look too at how those communities of of prey species are influenced by disturbance in the area.
• 19:21
  So forest fires are really common and, in the Ramparts and elsewhere in the Boreal, and they're also projected to increase in in frequency and area as the climate worms. So there's it's an important kind of question right now. Well, how will that influence these these these species as food sources for vulnerable duck species.
• 19:41
  Mike Brasher: Talk about that in a little bit more detail there, Moriah, and it may have been where you were gonna go, but the role of forest fire in influencing what may be happening within a particular wetland. Why is that? Help us understand that that system, what's going on there.
• 19:56
  Moriah Tange: Sure. So so, yeah, as I said, they they're a dominant natural disturbance in this area, and they're relevant to studying wetlands, invertebrates and ducks on wetlands, because fires cause the release of nutrients and organic matter from the the soil and the vegetation surrounding wetlands. And so these materials then flow into wetlands and other aquatic systems, and they can influence the the nutrient levels and the overall productivity of water bodies from algae to herbivorous invertebrates all the way up to the ducks that consume these invertebrates. So although some amount of fire is totally natural in the Boreal and small increases in in wetland productivity might actually benefit ducks, the question is kind of what might happen if fires become larger and more frequent as they're predicted to do under a warming climate. And, yeah, as as the climate warms, will impacts, like melting permafrost or or other things exacerbate any negative effects of of large frequent fires?
• 20:59
  Mike Brasher: So when we're talking about fires in the context of this study, it's not we're we're not so concerned about it burning potential nesting habitat, upland nesting habitat. Of course, some of the ducks that that are abundant and that nest in the Boreal Forest are gonna be nesting in that wetland fringe or in some of the shallow water there, so the fire may not be as big of an issue there. But it's not even then, we're not talking about a concern about fire burning nesting cover. It's more related to the the the nutrient cycles that occur and affect wetlands and then the invertebrate communities in those wetlands. Right?
• 21:31
  Moriah Tange: Yeah. In my case, at least, not to say that that would not be an important factor to look at, absolutely, for for upland nesting species. Yeah. Absolutely.
• 21:40
  Mike Brasher: So tell us a little about the, yeah, the the invertebrate sampling that you did. You don't have to go into a whole lot of details because as we've talked to some of the other people, we've had another had another former student, now employee of Ducks Unlimited, Katrina Terry, talk about her research recently, and she also sampled invertebrates, and I know enough to to to know that there's a lot of tedious work that goes along with invertebrate sampling, but just tell us a little about that that sampling, the other measurements that you took from these wetlands, and and what that entailed.
• 22:13
  Moriah Tange: Yeah. So this was the part where we we had the the helicopter equipped with floats, and we went and landed on a a subset of wetlands in the ramparts. So yeah. So we used a kick net sampling approach. So, basically, it's just a big handle with a big triangular net on the end and a sort of collection container screwed onto the the very end.
• 22:34
  And we were, interested in a bit of a more of a coarse level of measurement here for the invertebrates, so, single kick net samples, from the center of each wetland. We took them in May and June. And so yeah. So it gets a little bit there are some details that follow. So you, get that sample.
• 22:54
  You then have to preserve it in some ethanol and then count it as soon as you can before anything starts to degrade or anything like that. And that's a steep learning curve learning to identify Yeah. Invertebrates. So, yeah, I had a lot of fun doing it, but it takes a lot of training and and mentorship. So but I highly recommend developing that skill for sure.
• 23:15
  Mike Brasher: Yeah. E everybody needs to sort invertebrates and identify invertebrates to various tectonomic levels at some point in their in their career. Right? Mhmm. So let's I'm going to give you an opportunity to fill in any critical gaps in the type of methods and data that you collected, but I also want to move forward with sort of a well, I guess the thing that I should say is that you you have completed your your all of your fieldwork, right?
• 23:43
  Moriah Tange: I have, yeah.
• 23:44
  Mike Brasher: Okay, so now you are in the analysis and writing phase, so your your results, what you may have right now, are, I think it's fair to still classify them as as preliminary. They certainly have not gone through a peer review process, so we don't have to get into a whole lot of detail about your results, but I do want to at least give you an opportunity to tell us preliminarily some of the big picture trends that you might have found if you're ready to discuss them. So anything we missed, and then let's move on to a bit of a discussion of of what you discovered.
• 24:13
  Moriah Tange: So yeah. So beginning yeah. Preliminary results. So I I am in the writing stages now, but like you say, hasn't been submitted for review yet. But yeah.
• 24:20
  So overall, for the habitat selection portion of my research, I found that pond size was was one of the most important variables, predicting where SCOTOR and SCOP pairs would be, which wetlands they would, select to be on. I also found some weak effects of landscape variables, but they were much weaker in comparison. But I can I can tell you that overall, the results suggested that conservation planning in the Northern Boreal Forest should prioritize complexes of large circular ponds for SCOTRS and large ponds surrounded by few water bodies and little wetland and water body cover for
• 24:57
  Mike Brasher: SCOP? Interesting.
• 24:58
  Moriah Tange: It was inter interesting. Yeah. So, yeah, these sort of these results suggested to me that the selection of the landscape variables is probably happening at a higher level than what I examined here. So it may be more relevant to when, these duck critters are selecting home ranges within the ramparts area and less relevant when they're actually selecting wetlands within the home range. At that low level of selecting the wetland, maybe things like wetland size, like I found, and things like invertebrate abundance become the the the driving factors influencing selection.
• 25:32
  Mike Brasher: So you did find a bit of a relationship between invertebrate abundance, and I think your your metric associated with the the ducks was, like, the probability of occupancy or probability of of detecting or finding a a particular duck on a given wetland. Right? So did you find any relationship to those invertebrate measurements?
• 25:54
  Moriah Tange: So, in fact, the two portions of my research, the invertebrate part and the the major, scoderinskop habitat selection portion, they, happen during different years. So there's actually not temporal overlap. So I didn't have a metric of invertebrate abundance, to to use in those goiter and scoff habitat selection models. So it's a little bit separate.
• 26:18
  Mike Brasher: Okay. So that would have been a separate question where you were you were asking how fires, presence or absence of fires in the surrounding landscape would have affected various water chemistry met measurements and as well as the invertebrate community. That would that was the separate Okay. Cool. I missed that, so thanks for clarifying it.
• 26:37
  Moriah Tange: For sure.
• 26:38
  Mike Brasher: So what else then?
• 26:40
  Moriah Tange: Right. So so that's, yeah, the habitat selection portion, and then and then coming back to the fire question, I found very little effective fire on the water chemistry and the invertebrate communities in the ramparts. This is not, especially surprising. There are a few studies conducted in similar areas that suggested the same conclusion, that there's some sort of resilience in wetland ecosystems in the Northwestern Boreal to the two fire impacts. So it's in line with with previous work.
• 27:13
  Mike Brasher: What do we think that mechanism would be? Is it do plants mobilize and take up those nutrients so quickly that they, yeah, they they get, quote, taken out of the system really rapidly?
• 27:23
  Moriah Tange: Yeah. It's it's potentially that. The other thing is the the amount of nutrients going in from these fires depends a whole lot on fire severity or the the area burned. It depends on the local topography, the soil characteristics, weather events following the fire, kinds of factors like that. And so that's that's why it's been a bit of a findings have been a little bit inconsistent related to questions surrounding fire, because of those reasons.
• 27:54
  So it's a it's a little hard to hypothesize. The area is a low relief area with sort of limited flow, and so there is the possibility that that those releases just didn't flow and accumulate at very high levels in these wetlands.
• 28:10
  Mike Brasher: It's interesting that you talk about the the number of factors that influence a particular biological process in this case because that's that is so ever present in in all of our conversations, whether we're talking about distributions of ducks or what influences waterfowl harvest from region to region. There's never one single factor in nature. There are so many things that intersect and interact, and so it's you know, that that keeps coming up. It's pervasive in our conversations, but it is so because it's it's true.
• 28:42
  Moriah Tange: Mhmm. Exactly. Well, one of
• 28:44
  Mike Brasher: the questions that I wanted to ask you was related to the invertebrates, and what are some of the more dominant aquatic macroinvertebrates that you would have encountered?
• 28:53
  Moriah Tange: Yeah. So a couple of them are probably familiar to people. So, like, lots of what's the what's the word? Insect larvae were found. So these are, like, larvae stages of terrestrial insects, including including dip drag.
• 29:07
  Yeah. Like, the terrestrial versions, you'd you'd know them as, like, midges, mayflies, dragonflies, damselflies. Those all have larvae stages that that occur in aquatic systems. So a ton of those, and we also saw crustaceans like scuds or you might know them as side swimmers. These include amphipods, which are a really important prey source for, scotoranskop.
• 29:31
  Yeah. And also some smaller crustaceans as well, like copepods and ostracods.
• 29:35
  Mike Brasher: So, Moriah, what about a there's a a group of aquatic invertebrates that that at least I remember of course, when I was growing up, I didn't know what taxonomic order they were in or family they were in, but the the hemiptera, the true bugs, and within that in within that aquatic realm, we think about the the water beetles, water boatman, things of that nature. Oh, yeah. Maybe the water boatman is what I'm thinking of. Did you encounter many of those?
• 30:01
  Moriah Tange: Yeah. We did get some of those. Yeah. Chryxids.
• 30:05
  Mike Brasher: Yeah. Okay. Alright. So those were the ones that I was always fascinated by whenever I was a young kid Yeah. Pilfering through the water, and you'd see those dudes just kind of swimming off really fast and would chase them and try to grab them and
• 30:17
  Moriah Tange: Yeah. Yeah. They're much more visible than some of the, what are called, I guess, the benthic macroinvertebrates. Yeah.
• 30:22
  Mike Brasher: Yep. Yeah. And so all of those are important for various as various food items for ducklings or for adult ducks that are building reserves and laying eggs and all of those types of things. So okay. Well, I know that you are still writing, as we mentioned a moment ago, still doing some analysis and writing, so you still have a little bit of work to do, but is there anything else that we want share at this time relative to your research?
• 30:52
  I have a few other questions, but anything else research related to discuss?
• 30:55
  Moriah Tange: I think we've about covered it.
• 30:56
  Mike Brasher: Well, thank you for for the the background there and and allowing us to see a little bit of that science landscape and your scientific efforts there in the Boreal Forest, you know, through this this mental image. As as we've mentioned a couple of times, that is a very remote landscape and brought with it certain logistical challenges, but I'm all but I'm sure also some very rewarding experiences, so I do want to ask you, what was either the most memorable, the most spectacular, the most exciting? Did you have any harrowing experiences? What are some of the best memories that you will take with you from your your time studying wetlands and ducks in the Boreal Forest?
• 31:38
  Moriah Tange: Yeah. Some of the ones that really stick out to me are just the the wildlife sightings that don't happen in more populated urban places further south. So there's certain, yeah, certain large mammals that I don't know if I'll ever see again. For example, we saw lynx and mountain lion or also known as cougars. We we also saw, like, in the more northern sites, caribou with calves from a distance.
• 32:06
  And so these are sort of you know, can be once in a lifetime sightings, and it really just instills sort of that wonder and that sort of passion for conserving these areas. They're just such, yeah, stunning kind of beautiful sightings to have. So
• 32:22
  Mike Brasher: What is next then for Moriah as you as you finish out your your master's, your thesis? Where do you see yourself going next? What what's your passion? What's your interest and your plans going forward?
• 32:36
  Moriah Tange: I'm planning to enter the workforce now, so I'm probably beginning in winter. Yeah. So I'm I'm back in Interior BC, and so the sort of, like, the wetland systems here are pretty few and far between, but there's a really beautiful habitat management area at the South End Of Kootenai Lake in the West Kootenai region. And it's this really important important link in the waterfowl habitat chain between California and the Arctic. And so really beautiful spot I would love to get the chance to volunteer at, work at.
• 33:08
  There's also provincial government positions here that interest me as well. Overall, anything with migratory birds sort of does interest me, but, of course, I'm really eyeing that that wetland system on Kootenai Lake.
• 33:21
  Mike Brasher: And to close out here, tell us who all were the the major funders and supporters of this research. None of this is is done without the without the support, whether it be financial or logistical, of a host of individuals and agencies and partners. So this is an opportunity to kinda give a shout out to some of those folks.
• 33:41
  Moriah Tange: Absolutely. Yeah. So I'll I'll begin with Ducks Unlimited Canada. The MBNA award absolutely made this this work possible, and it was such a great support throughout. The SCODR surveys were also supported in large part by the Sea Duck joint joint venture.
• 33:58
  Some funding came directly from my university as well, some from Environment and Climate Change Canada. And a big source of logistical support, sort of like I mentioned earlier, was the community of Fork Good Hope and a couple of environmental monitor monitors there who helped us throughout this work.
• 34:14
  Mike Brasher: Very cool. Moriah, thank you for for all the work that you've done. Congratulations again on being a recipient of this fellowship. Congratulations on successfully navigating field seasons in a crazy world, in a remote landscape, and making your way on to probably not the funnest part of being a graduate student, you know, the analysis and writing, but it is also important, and so it's good to hear that you're making progress on that. But, yeah, congratulations on every aspect of this.
• 34:44
  Thanks for being a great ambassador for Ducks Unlimited and Ducks Unlimited Canada and MBNA, and look forward to hopefully working with you somehow in in the profession as we go forward. So thank you so much again, Moriah.
• 34:57
  Moriah Tange: Absolutely. Thanks so much for having
• 34:59
  Mike Brasher: me. A special thanks to our guest on today's episode, Moriah Tengay, a master's student with University of Saskatchewan. We appreciate her time and appreciate her investing her intellect and her time in waterfowl and wetland research. As always, we thank our producer Clay Baird for the great work that he does, and we thank you, the listener, for your support and your time and for your commitment to wetlands and waterfowl conservation.
• 35:22
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• 35:44
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