Wilder in the News

The Guardian: The half-moon hairstreak butterfly is among the endangered species fighting the heat and smoke of a record wildfire season. In late August 2017, a bolt of lightning struck Kenow Mountain in eastern British Columbia. In less than two weeks, the smouldering that ensued had transformed into a large forest fire, tearing through the rugged landscape and quickly spreading into Waterton Lakes National Park.

Mongabay News: A recently published horizon scan on community-based conservation identified 15 topics that offer opportunities to yield positive change for people and the planet, as well as provide insights on avoiding pitfalls in achieving 2030 global policy targets. Community-based conservation has for decades tried to tackle these interrelated challenges with mixed success and, at times, counter-productive results, but has arisen as a promising and popular approach on global agendas.

CTV News: An Alberta species-at-risk is being given a helping hand from a Calgary energy company. Tamarack Valley Energy has announced a partnership with the Wilder Institute/Calgary Zoo to help conserve the habitats of burrowing owls, which overlap in many areas where the company works in the province. The agreement will include a $150,000 investment to the Wilder Institute's programs devoted to conserving populations of the subterranean bird.

CTV News: The Wilder Institute/Calgary Zoo is teaming up with a pair of West African conservation organizations to help advance conservation of the Cross River gorilla. The institute announced on social media Wednesday that it's joining forces with the Nigerian Conservation Foundation (NCF) and Centre for Biodiversity Conservation Research (CBCR) to help build up the Cross River gorilla population, which is currently estimated to be around 300 remaining in the wild.

Toronto Star: More than 1,900 tadpoles of the endangered northern leopard frog have been released into the wild in the last few months. The Wilder Institute/Calgary Zoo said it has been working with other conservation groups, governments and zoos in Western Canada to breed, translocate and release the frogs into some wetlands near Kimberley, B.C.

CBC News: Still only owlets when they were brought to the Calgary Zoo last summer, 20 burrowing owls have since been returned to the wild in southeastern Alberta. "They grew up into adults at the zoo over winter," said Graham Dixon-MacCallum, a conservation research population ecologist with the Wilder Institute/Calgary Zoo.