With a little help from my friends ...

I never said it would be easy to pursue a PhD while remaining a full time employee of the BC Forest Service, however, there appears to be things that I had thought would be easier to accomplish then they turned out to be. In order to get 6 GPS collars deployed on horses across the Muskwa-Kechika Management Area, it did prove to be a logistical challenge that would not have been acheived if it hadn't of been for some very talented, kind, considerate and supportive friends and colleagues. I would like to recognize you here as contributors to our work and I would like to thank you for being there at the precise moment when I needed you the most:


Lotek www.lotek.com/update.htm - Stewart Strathearn who did a fabulous job in getting the GPS collars to Fort Nelson in such a short time


Central Mountain Air who went above and beyond in their customer service, saved me a drive in the middle of the night to Fort St. John and flew the collars up on their first plane to Fort Nelson on thursday morning. Fly CMA!

Don Lewis out of the PG Fire Center who rigged up a radio receiver for me at the very last minute and sent it up from Prince George with CO Nathan Smienk.

Conservation Officer Nathan Smienk who allowed me to play a really good joke on him but then ended up saving the day by picking up the receiver from PG and almost being the ultimate champ of picking up the collars in Fort St. John except that they didn't make it there in time ... the lesson learned here is that if you ever need to fly something quickly from one location to another, make sure that you send it express or priority and not just general delivery. General delivery allows for your GPS collars to sit all day and night in the Pearson airport in Toronto and then after finally getting to Vancouver, it also allows them to miss 2 out of 3 flights to northern BC which really, really makes people attempting to do research loose a lot of sleep!!!! Nathan - you're a life saver! I'm glad you're part of the north country crew.

Marten Geertsema who picked up and dropped off the receiver from PGFC to CO Nathan after a large workload kept him very busy - thank you for doing that Marten and thank you for talking me through my intense distressed phone calls that felt like they were quite numerous over the past 2 weeks!!!

Gator - Zone Protection Officer - who I'm not sure what I would do without and who never appears to get rattled - thank you for coming up to help me get those first 2 collars connected and helping to figure out the receiver to check the VHF frequency on the collars! Thank you for your patience Gator and for your support.
Gator helping to test the VHF frequency before deployment.

Ladies at Greyhound who helped with the shipping to the Yukon and loaded the box as the bus starting to load ...

Darwin and Wendy Cary of Scoop Lake Outfitters who provided logistical support and patience in waiting for the collars to arrive in Watson Lake for their pickup!

Brady Allred for the last minute question that I realized I thought about right before I put the collars on the bus - does it matter the sex of the animal to be collared?!

Ty Schippmann who saved the day literally by helping me put the collars together the right way and siliconing them! Not sure how to repay that good catch that I had missed ... doesn't matter if I have a PhD or not - somethings are just natural intelligence eh? Good thing Ty was there to make sure the collars got put together right!!!
Ty working on the collars at my desk

Blaine Anderson who provided amazing technical support just in the nick of time

Peter Hisch and Dave Gasper – Peter put us in touch with Dave out of Rocky Mountain Forest District/ Fire Center who helped teach Gator and I how to run the receiver so we could hit the frequency of each collar
Testing the collars

Michelle Edwards and Stephanie Wilkie – box makers and support staff extraordinaire! Thanks for having my back Edwards - your boxes were awesome!
Stephanie and I heading to the aiport to ship the last 2 sets of collars out to the mountains

Peter Villers and Tracy at Villers Air Service who were kind enough to fly the 2 boxes of collars out to the mountains for me. Amazing pilots - great people!!! http://www.villersair.com/ Fly Villers!!!!

Larry and Lori Warren of Tuchodi River Outfitters for helping with the logistics of collar deployment!

Barry Tompkins, Gwen and Vicki of Big 9/ High and Wild Wilderness Safaris for their logistical support! Thank you ladies for being in such great communication with me as I was getting things figured out. I send good thoughts so that the collars can be deployed as soon as the wind dies down!

Brent Bye, Gator and Stanley from the PG Fire Center and Fort Nelson NIFAC for getting me up in the air to start figuring out how I'm going to do my vegetation work and mapping, as well as to Stanley for teaching me about fire behaviour and Gator for talking about carbon with me.

Additional technical (and emotional) support: Ranger Al, Jeff Scott, Liard River Adventures' Schippmanns, Mum and Trevor, Chad Nixon and Laura Hickman, Conrad Thiessen, Laurie and Barry Dolan, Shelly Boulton, Stephanie Smith and Lana Lowe.

And for their above and beyond support, I can not thank the following 2 enough:
The BC Range Program - I can't say enough about the wonderful people in the range program and especially at Range Branch who are helping me out. Thank y'all!!!

Dr. Sam Fuhlendorf for giving me the reins to steer through some really thick brush and then arriving out on top of the big country overlooking the rangelands that we all cherish so much. Thanks for the support from so far away - it was a tough ride but I think I hung on for the whole 8 seconds ... where's the belt buckle?

And the data collection begins!!

Nice collars! (3300L from Lotek)

I couldn't do this without a little help from my friends across the Province. I tip my hat to y'all and thank you sincerely very much for being part of the ride with me!I know this was a big push to get this part of the research up and off the ground and that it really only has taken shape in the last 30 days, but, we almost did it - as long as that last set of collars makes it safely to Big 9 ... the winds really should die down soon I hope for you Barry ...