Spring 2026

Newsletter Archive

Executive Director's Message

This spring, the Miistakis Institute is pleased to celebrate the renewal of our long-standing affiliation with Mount Royal University (MRU), reaffirming a partnership that continues to bridge applied research, student learning, and community impact. Over the past term, we were proud to work closely with 11 MRU students through work-integrated learning courses, providing hands-on opportunities to contribute to real-world conservation challenges. Ranging diverse topics from the identification of wildlife mortality hotspots, to the creation of citizen science outreach materials, to researching beaver re-introduction, to analyzing wetland biodiversity, these students brought energy, insight, and innovation to our projects while gaining valuable experience at the intersection of science, policy and practice. Supporting future conservation leaders remains central to our mission, and we are excited to continue expanding these opportunities in the years ahead.

We've been keeping a close eye on the federal government's new Forces of Nature policy, which feels like a positive step forward for nature-based climate solutions in Canada. It's encouraging to see a strong focus on protecting and restoring ecosystems as essential infrastructure—recognizing how wetlands, forests, and wildlife corridors help buffer against floods, drought, and biodiversity loss. This direction aligns closely with the work we're doing at Miistakis, especially around integrating ecological connectivity into land-use planning and advancing natural infrastructure approaches like beaver-based restoration. As these federal commitments start to take shape, there's a real opportunity to ensure that science-based, locally grounded solutions are built into policy and investment decisions. We are looking forward to seeing how this unfolds on the ground.

Spring promises to be busy at Miistakis - we are launching a new BioBlitz monitoring program, we continue to support municipal planning and advancing watershed resilience and will be supporting our partners in our Reconnecting the Rockies Alberta program as we deploy additional collars to monitor wildlife movement along Highway 3... and lots more! We are grateful to our partners, students, and supporters who make this work possible, and we look forward to building on this momentum throughout the year.

Happy spring,

Danah Duke, Executive Director