For her honours thesis, Kyla Wallin investigated how moose respond to the encroachment of wildfire.  Using a spatial dataset from a large number of GPS-tracked moose, she asked whether moose flee from an encroaching fire, stay put, or seek refuge within unburnt patches that the fire has skipped over.   With wildfire forecasted to become increasingly common, her work sheds light on how this important animal is immediately impacted by the disturbance, as well as how the responses of the animal may be adaptive in nature.

Our partners on this project were Chris Proctor with the BC Ministry of Land, Water and Resource Stewardship, and Dr. Jill Harvey in the Department of Natural Resource Sciences at TRU.  Kyla can be reached at kylawallin[at]outlook.com.