In April 2020 The Okanagan Institute for Biodiversity, Resilience, and Ecosystem Services established the Postdoctoral Fellowship in applied connectivity conservation research and planning. This initiative has secured funding for the period June 2020 to June 2021,and our goal is to secure financial support for the BRAES post-doc program over the long term. During Covid-19 times we were not able to secure funding for a new post-doctoral fellow but we continue looking for opportunities for new fellows to come.
The selected fellow for the period 2020-2021l worked under the joint mentorship of Drs. Jason Pither, Adam Ford, and Lael Parrott at UBC, and in close collaboration with scientists from Environment & Climate Change Canada. This position was an excellent opportunity to work with government and other stakeholders to support evidence-based connectivity conservation planning, thereby contributing to Canada meeting its Biodiversity Goals and Targets.
One expected output from these efforts is a co-authored perspectives or synthesis paper, addressing scientific and methodological challenges in connectivity conservation research and planning. Using the team’s contributions to a symposium of the International Association of Landscape Ecology (IALE 2020, Toronto) as a starting point, the post-doctoral fellow will work with symposium contributors to gather their diverse perspectives, synthesize relevant literature, organize workshops, and liaise with additional stakeholders.
