If you want to see change, you gotta be part of making change.  I nominated four outstanding Canadian women for the 2014 A Bold Vision initiative, a meeting of 23 outstanding women in Canada.  I'm taking a leaf from Dawn Bazely's example (see here and here) by posting about why I think they are terrific candidates. Click on their names to read the full  nomination.

Update: Turns out that I was nominated too!  

Here is my plea for YOU to nominate terrific people for awards - and to encourage people to self-nominate!  Scroll down to the bottom of this page to see some awards in science, social justice, conservation, and more. Please consider diversity of all types when you think of nominees. 

I got such a kick out of seeing wildlife through remote cameras, and these videos from coastal British Columbia are great. They were taken in the "Great Bear Rainforest" (aka BC's Central and North Coast), a huge stretch of temperate rainforest on Canada's west coast running from northern Vancouver Island to southeast Alaska. Wildlife are plentiful and people have lived there for millennia, but the region really sprang onto the world stage in the last decade or so. It's an amazing place - and it's where I hope to do postdoctoral research!

Remote cameras let scientists study wildlife from afar. Using these and other non-invasive methods of research, we can minimize the impact of research on animal behaviour. But Remote cameras aren't entirely without impact - they can inadvertently affect animals - so we need to be careful how, when, and where they are used.

This last video isn't about remote cameras - it's about Norm Hann's stand-up paddleboard trip through the Great Bear Rainforest, following the route of the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipelines project. His goal was to highlight First Nations culture and traditional food harvest and the threat that an oil spill would have on local people, wildlife, and the environment. (Go to 32:00 to see my friend Chris Williamson's project making cedar stand-up paddleboards with students at the Bella Bella Community School - also covered by National Geographic!)

My second foray into the blogosphere with Montreal's Ecosystems at Your Service. This story is about how resolving a neighbourhood disagreement about whether or not to remove a tree growing beside my apartment building in Montreal. We had an arborist assess the health of our tree and how it could be pruned to reduce potential damage to the building foundation. 

I learned a lot about urban trees by researching and writing this story. I didn't know that having trees in neighbourhoods reduces speeding, lowers blood pressure, and increases business revenue. Montreal has some great municipal policies regarding urban trees; I'm really glad that those policies made us have an arborist assess (and save!) ours. 

My first blog post over at Montreal's Ecosystems at Your Service!  I'm really pleased to be part of such a cool project, aiming to connect Montrealers with Nature through story-telling.  

I like science outreach that uses unusual and creative methods to make their message stick with each audience. The good folks at Minute Earth make short (2-3 minute) YouTube videos explaining all manner of science-y things, from freezer burn to bed bugs, or why some countries drive on the left vs. the right side of the road. This time they tackle niches, competition, and coexistence using the analogy of microbreweries.  

Here's their basic question: How can little specialist plants (read: microbreweries) survive in a world dominated by big competitive trees (read: macrobreweries)?

Here's their answer: "By capturing the most valuable resources before they reach others, dominant trees and companies exclude weaker competitors who employ the same tactics.  But there are trade-offs in any strategies, and being the best on average rarely works in all cases and conditions.  That's how understorey ferns and microbreweries can succeed, by specialising in conditions the big guys aren't so good at -- the so-called empty niches... Where there are resources, there is the potential to survive. So it's not really surprising that both nature and the economy, driven by the same kinds of competition, give rise to niches and diversification, in the canopy and understorey, in the forest and supermarket aisle."

I'll toast to that!  And with some great organic microbreweries and wineries to boot!