FRI Research

09/30/2026

Today we recommit to listening, learning, and conducting ourselves with empathy.

09/28/2026

Conference season continues: we're at the Canadian Institute of Forestry National Conference in Edmonton. Both our Caribou Program Lead and President were invited to share how our applied research can inform and improve forest management in Canada.

09/25/2026

An important discussion. Better planning and operations requires strong research, and impactful research requires strong partnerships with those who will be applying it on the landscape.

09/23/2026

The International Bear Association's annual conference is on in Pescasseroli, Italy. Cam is presenting research made possible by our unique long-term dataset of 16 years of grizzly bear locations, tracked with GPS collars. Darío is sharing a major success story for science-based bear management, the Grizzly Bear Tools, which allow planners to put research directly into practice.

All times are local.

09/21/2026

The newest member of the Caribou team is Gaurav! His first focus is developing movement models for the Moose Research Initiative. After work Gaurav will most likely be playing sports, cooking, or reading. Welcome to Hinton!

In case you missed them, Tyler and Bijaya also recently joined the Caribou Program. Read about their work and interest on friresearch.ca

09/04/2026

Fishing on a sunny day! Check out the blogs about this work on our site:
https://friresearch.ca/news/two-shifts-five-phones-150-fish
https://friresearch.ca/news/rags-to-fishes

09/04/2026

One of our collaborations with the Swan River First Nation is a survey of Arctic grayling in the watershed south of Lesser Slave Lake. Jesse and Hailey wrote about the experience, each in their own style.

Read about the ups and downs in Rags to Fishes, and watch as Jesse hauls in an "absolute lunker": https://friresearch.ca/news/rags-to-fishes

And read about the victories and casualties of a campaign that required a lot of bushwhacking in hip waders: https://friresearch.ca/news/two-shifts-five-phones-150-fish

08/31/2026

Join host, summer 2026 Science Communication intern, Brianna Lyman, as she talks to interesting staff about all things interesting. All Things fRI Research is a podcast miniseries that explores:

All Things Caribou: Dr. Laura Finnegan explains how the Caribou Program uses new and shared data to understand how linear features influence predator-prey dynamics, directly impacting the survival of Caribou.

All Things GIS: Julie Duval lead of GIS services provides an overview of GIS and gives examples of how its applications and capabilities have evolved over the years at fRI Research.

&

All Things Grizzly Crew: Kirsty McFayden shares her experiences as a Grizzly Bear Biologist on a close-knit crew. Her wild and descriptive stories about fieldwork and trail cameras show how rewarding fieldwork can be.

Streaming only on our website, link below!

https://friresearch.ca/search/?frisearchable_posts%5BhierarchicalMenu%5D%5Btaxonomies_hierarchical.publication_type.lvl0%5D%5B0%5D=Audio-Visual&frisearchable_posts%5BhierarchicalMenu%5D%5Btaxonomies_hierarchical.publication_type.lvl0%5D%5B1%5D=Podcasts%20and%20Radio

08/19/2026

Written, directed, filmed, edited, and starring Sierra Makasoff and Suzanne MacKinnon. For the best experience, mute the audio and blast "All the Small Things" by Blink-182.

08/12/2026

When non-native fish are released into lakes and rivers, one tool officials have for predicting the impact on native species is an equation called the Propagule Pressure Index. In many cases, it gives a good idea of how much competition and predation the new population brings to a stream, and how much hybridization may occur with native species. In a new paper, Lothian and Kissinger suggest some enhancements to the equation that let it predict how impacts change over time, and more realistically incorporate fish mortality and how fish use lakes as habitat. Without these inclusions, the original equation tends to overestimate the impacts of introduced fish when mortality is high or when a larger proportion of fish take up residence in a lake rather than a connecting stream. The adjusted equation can be used to help environmental managers perform stocking assessments and aid in allocating resources for targeted removals from historic stocking. The paper is a collaboration between the Water and Fish Program and the University of Calgary.

The Propagule Pressure Index (PPI) is commonly used in riverine systems to understand the environmental impacts of non-native species introductions. As not all introduction events are equal, we propo...