In 2014, the Miistakis Institute hosted a Citizen Science Conference, exploring this diverse field with sessions on program design, evaluation, policy implications, technology and applications in parks and protected areas. This links to the website that chronicled that event.
Tracy Lee
How do Wildlife Cross the Road? Ask the people who live there!
Speaker Bio: Tracy is a senior project manager at the Miistakis Institute, a research institute affiliated with Mount Royal University, which brings people and ideas together to promote healthy communities and landscapes. Tracy acquired her M.Sc. from the University of Calgary, Resources and the Environment Program. Tracy's graduate work, in association with the Miistakis Institute, focused on the development and assessment of a citizen science project to monitor wildlife movement across a major highway. Tracy has helped developed numerous research citizen science programs such as Call of the Wetland, GrizzTracker, Pronghorn Xing, RoadWatchBC and Collision Count.
Presentation: How do Wildlife Cross the Road? Ask the people who live there!
Miistakis Institute has developed a number of citizen science programs aimed at improving human and wildlife safety and reducing habitat fragmentation across highways in multiple jurisdictions. A key information gap in these programs relates to accurate spatial records of animal vehicle collisions, limiting our ability to present a defensible business case for governments to invest in mitigation infrastructure. There are proven strategies to enable save movement of wildlife across highways, but we lacked knowledge on best locations for mitigation, citizen engagement in the issue, and political will. Citizen science programs have helped to address the knowledge gap, build an engaged community and foster political will. Data collected by citizens has been used to support identification of areas with high animal vehicle collisions, highlight the value of investment in standardizing data collection tools, and contribute novel research findings to the field of transportation ecology. We present lessons learned on how to connect citizen science data with decision making from over 10 years of experience of implementing place-based transportation ecology citizen science programs. For example, keys to success include, data collection has a specified purpose, inclusion of quality control measures, data is collected at a scale appropriate to the decision being made, decision makers are included in the development of program; and data is shared with decision makers in appropriate format. We present these lessons using case studies from citizen science place based programs developed by Miistakis.