INQ-McGill Chair In Northern Research – Wildlife Conservation And Traditional Food Security
Chairholder
Murray Humphries
McGill University
Mission
The INQ-McGill Chair In Northern Research – Wildlife Conservation And Traditional Food Security will focus on the protection and sustainable development of northern Quebec’s natural resources. In particular, research will focus on how resource development and other forms of environmental change impact the abundance and health of northern wildlife populations and their contribution to traditional food security.
This chair has been funded by INQ from 2014 to 2022.
Context
Wildlife research is in the midst of a revolution, driven by the rapidly advancing field of biologging, which refers to the use of miniaturized animal-attached tags for logging and/or relaying of data about an animal's movements, behaviour, physiology and/or environment. There is an opportunity to drastically improve how we assess, monitor, and mitigate the impacts of resource development on wildlife, by capitalizing on new biologging technology to document wildlife movement, diet, nutrition, and demographics before and after (as well as in proximity to and distant from) resource development. This research will focus on the wildlife species that are key sources of traditional food for northern communities and the environmental impacts that threaten these species. The major advance and innovation offered by this proposed research arises from the new technology, which for the first time enables direct and continuous time and space documentation of the physiological, behavioural, and population impacts of development on wildlife, and embedding the new technology within applied research partnerships focused on sustainable development and food security.