A Holiday Message
What’s new with WBRA
South West Invasive Managers
A new page has sprouted on the WBR website
The South West Invasive Managers (SWIM) represent a diverse group of agencies and organizations committed to the sharing of resources and promotion of best practices toward managing invasive plant species within these cherished southwestern Alberta landscapes.SWIM will promote a collaborative, harmonized, and consistent approach to invasive species issues in southwestern Alberta to industry stakeholders and individual landowners.
Founded upon a goal of accumulating the knowledge and diverse expertise of the region’s invasive species managers, SWIM ensures the following existing and emerging methods are shared and implemented within the region:
- Prevention of invasive plant species
- Early Detection and Rapid Response (EDRR)
- Integrated management strategies
- Reclamation and restoration of desired ecological functions
Ultimately, SWIM aims to remove the barriers to effective invasive species prevention and management between jurisdictions and organizations.
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The WBRA is pleased to host SWIM on our website and support their ongoing efforts within the WBR and beyond.
Carnivores and Communities
Mark your calendars
Join us in January as we explore and discuss relevant topics surrounding large carnivores within WBR. More details to come.
We hope to see you there!
Building Resilience for Bats
Summer of 2022 Bat Box Building Workshop held in the M.D of Ranchland. Photo by Crystal Hiebert
WBRA’s Building Resilience for Bats project was created in 2019 in a collaborative effort to help bats provincially. Our outreach and data are helping raise awareness of bat conservation and are contributing important information on known roost sites in southwestern Alberta.
Since 2020, WBR conservation staff have helped landowners to identify and monitor maternity roosts for bats. A total of 20 bat roosts have been reported to date, and at least 4 of these roosts are sufficiently large enough to qualify as high priority roosts that are important to monitor annually.
Over the course of our project, we have held evening workshops on bats and bat ecology as well as a bat box building workshop with support from our partners at Alberta Community Bat Program and Milk River Watershed Council of Canada.
A big thank you to the ACBP, roost count volunteers, and the landowners who gave access to their properties and roosts – together we are all working to maintain bat populations in WBR!
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We recently finished compiling the data for our 2022 season and the map below shows the distribution of site visits completed to date. An individual map of the 2022 visits can be found here.Our partners at Alberta Community Bat Program have confirmed that the fungus causing white-nose syndrome was detected in Alberta this spring along the Milk River valley and the Beaver River valley in northeastern Alberta. We expect its arrival in WBR is imminent.If you would like to discuss ways to support our bat populations as they are impacted by this threat, please reach out to Elizabeth at eanderson@watertonbiosphere.com.
Click to view the Building Resilience for Bats completed site visits from 2020 to 2022
Join our Team
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