Kara completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Guelph and worked in animal medicine for several years.  She is now conducting MSc work on the small mammal communities in the dry grasslands in south-central BC.  She is building her thesis on a 27+ year data base of small mammal abundance collected each autumn by undergraduate students at TRU.   She is augmenting this work through data collection at other times of the year, so that we gain an improved understanding of how the seasons affect numbers of the two main animals in the community, namely the Deer Mouse and the Montane Vole, which in turn are an incredibly important link in the food web of the grassland ecosystem.   Kara will be taking a deep dive into the analysis of the data, looking for correlates of animal abundance with weather and climate changes over the decades.

Kara’s work is being supported by the Habitat Conservation Trust Fund and the Forest Enhancement Society of British Columbia.  Land access is granted by The City of Kamloops (Recreation & Culture) and Paper Excellence.  Her project lies on Tk’emlúps te Secwe̓pemc territory within the unceded ancestral lands of the Secwépemc Nation. You can contact Kara through  katkinson@tru.ca