Date: March 11, 2025

Time: 6 P.M.

Location: Virtual/Zoom

Join AWA for a presentation by Dr. Matthew Scrafford, a conservation scientist who leads the wolverine and caribou research program at Wildlife Conservation Society. North American wolverines face a myriad of threats from human disturbance. Matthew discusses his research team’s work to better understand the ecology and management of wolverines in boreal forest landscapes with industrial development. He will highlight research on wolverine denning ecology, habitat selection, density, survival, physiology, trapping, and home ranges, and relate how this work has helped update management guidelines for the species. Matthew will then discuss how this research, and that of others, has helped clarify our understanding of wolverines as a wilderness species.

About the presenter

Matthew works to advance the understanding and conservation of wolverines and caribou in Alberta and Ontario. As a Scientist with WCS Canada, Matthew led a 7-year wolverine radiotelemetry and camera-trapping study in Red Lake, Ontario to document the effects of human disturbances on wolverine abundance, distribution, survival, and denning. Matthew is currently leading winter aerial surveys for wolverine and caribou tracks to understand long term changes in their distribution. Matthew also is leading a camera-trapping project to determine how predators of caribou use decommissioned forestry roads.

Matthew began his ecology career as an assistant on U.S. Forest Service wildlife research projects in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Along the way, he also worked wildland fire as a U.S. Forest Service Hotshot in Arizona and Montana. He received his MSc at Montana State University where he studied the ecology of reintroduced beavers north of Yellowstone National Park. Matthew received his PhD from the University of Alberta with a research focus on wolverine ecology in industrialized habitats in the Rainbow Lake and Birch Mountains areas of northern Alberta. This study, combined with radiotelemetry work in Red Lake, Ontario, have provided an unprecedented understanding of the ecology of wolverines in boreal forest habitats with industrial development.