The Toronto Chapter of the Society for Conservation Biology has sure had a busy couple of months! Although our work typically focuses on conservation issues in and around the Greater Toronto Area, we recently helped organize the 2018 North American Congress for Conservation Biology. This event brought together conservation professionals and students working across a wide variety of disciplines for a week of presentations, discussions, and learning. There were too many great talks to mention, but in general we heard some great discussions on issues of connectivity and climate change, indigenous-led conservation, and scientific communication. Helping organize NACCB2018 was a blast and some of SCB-Toronto’s own members presented at this conference as well!
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SCB-Toronto Vice President Chris Blackford beside conference volunteers Andrew Kadykalo and Jacqueiline Scott at the NACCB2018 registration booth. |
Not only did SCB-Toronto enjoy organizing NACCB2018, we also like to engage in the scientific process ourselves. We were recently involved in two shoreline cleanups of the Don River, a local river in Toronto, in part to help quantify the amount of trash accumulation in Lake Ontario. These types of events can give us a better understanding of the rate of pollution input into our local rivers.
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The Don River cleanup crew in Toronto. 94 lbs of litter was collected. |
Overall, SCB-Toronto likes holding a mix of discussion themed events, as well as active events like the shoreline cleanups. Our regular conservation-themed journal club, “Conservation Conversations”, has taken a hiatus due to NACCB2018 planning but it will resume in the fall. We are fortunate in Toronto to be close to stellar academic and professional groups with experts in biology and often get a wide range of knowledgeable people coming out to our discussions. We also run regular small-scale restoration activities on parks close to the University of Toronto campus.
If you would like to hear more about SCB-Toronto or have a suggestion about events we could take part in, please visit us at scbtoronto.com or drop us a line at scbtoronto@gmail.com.