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Speaker bio: Nicola Koper is a Professor of conservation biology at the Natural Resources Institute, University of Manitoba. She is also Director of the research group C19-Wild, which is focusing on evaluating impacts of COVID-19 lockdowns on wildlife world-wide. Dr. Koper’s current research foci include effects of COVID-19 lockdowns on birds, effects of anthropogenic noise and oil and gas development on birds, and Neotropical bird conservation.

Short summary: COVID-19 lockdowns have had tremendous impacts on global movements of humans, and this may have affected habitat suitability for many species of wildlife, particularly in anthropogenically modified landscapes. We used more than 4 million observations of 82 bird species from eBird collected in Canada and the USA from March-May 2017-2020 to determine whether detections of birds differed during the pandemic in comparison with the previous 3 years. We filtered data to control for observer experience, sample sizes, locations of observations, and species detectability, to disentangle changes in birder behaviour from changes in avian habitat use. Most avian species increased their use of human-modified landscapes in 2020 in comparison with prior years. Abundances were particularly likely to increase near airports, where substantial decreases in air and ground traffic in 2020 probably improved habitat quality. Many species altered habitat use at the continental scale and were particularly likely to increase in relative abundance in counties in which lockdowns coincided with peak migration for that species. Our research will help us understand how we could make changes to our social and transportation systems to improve habitat for birds.

1. Newsletters published 6 times a year
2. Keeping current on issues in wildlife and conservation from across Canada with our "Canadian Clips"
3. Job board where we list new job and graduate student opportunities
4. Meeting announcements for a broad array of wildlife organizations in North America
5. Involvement in Canadian conservation where your expertise leads to a collective voice through the position statements and opinions directed at influencing current events in wildlife and conservation in Canada
6. Canadian Section Annual Conference where you can showcase your work and learn about wildlife research and management projects going on across the nation
7. Travel awards to the TWS Annual Conference and the CSTWS Annual Conference
8. Networking with a wide array of other wildlife professionals and students across Canada

1. The TWS parent society webpage: http://wildlife.org/join/
2. The CSTWS webpage: http://cstws.ca/membership/