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.
Luke Wonneck
Speaker Bio:Luke is a Director of the Alberta Native Bee Council, and Agroforestry Technician with the Agroforestry and Woodlot Extension Society (AWES). With AWES, Luke’s primary responsibilities involve designing and implementing agroforestry projects, and developing and disseminating information on relevant management practices in the form of factsheets, presentations, and workshops.
Prior to AWES, Luke worked for the United Nations Environmental Program in Washington DC, Wildsight in Invermere BC, and the City of Calgary. Luke has a MSc in Environmental Policy from the University of Oxford, and a BSc in Environmental Science from the University of Calgary.
Poster abstract: Building Wild Bee Monitoring in Alberta
Wild pollinators provide crucial ecosystem services, but currently face a number of threats that include habitat loss, pesticide use, novel diseases, and climate change. It is difficult to estimate the effects of these threats on wild pollinator population levels in Alberta due to a lack of baseline data across most of the province. Further, while public interest and concern related to wild pollinators have been growing, conservation efforts have at times been hindered by uncertainty and misinformation.
In response, the recently formed Alberta Native Bee Council has initiated two wild pollinator monitoring programs. The first, the “Bumblebee Box Monitoring Program”, has received funding from Mount Royal University’s Institute for Environmental Sustainability. It involves providing members of the public with bumblebee box kits that, once built and installed, can be monitored to provide insight into local bumblebee population levels year-to-year.
The second program, the “Provincial Native Bee Monitoring Program”, has been established through collaboration with Alberta Agriculture and Forestry and financial support from the Alberta Conservation Association. It involves distributing blue vane traps to wildfire lookouts throughout the green zone of Alberta.
The wild bees captured in these traps will be processed in a series of “work-bees” involving public volunteers. Both of these programs are in their infancy, and will continue to be developed and adapted to meet their goal of building both scientific understanding of wild pollinator population levels across Alberta, and public understanding of wild pollinators, the threats they face, and potential solutions to these threats.