One thing I’ve thoroughly enjoyed while progressing through the world of fish, wildlife, and natural resources in general, is seeing the passion that many people have in the topic that they study. This is even more true when seeing those who have a passion for the often-overlooked topics or study species, such as Dr. Curtis Bjork and his fascination for lichens, mosses, and liverworts.

As this is a topic I am unfamiliar with, I gained a significant amount of new knowledge from it. The thing that stood out to me the most is how important it is for lichenologists to understand geology, as lichens are highly pH dependent and so lichens are more likely to grow on some types of rocks more than others. According to Dr. Bjork, finding limestone is a lichenologist’s dream as it can present a gold mine of different species. The other thing that stood out to me, was this idea of a “controlled intuitive wander” which involves surveying areas by having knowledge and experience of where certain species may be, and using this intuition to ‘wander’ to these areas and survey them.

I never thought a talk about surveying flora would be applicable to my own project, however the idea of a “controlled intuitive wander”, or at least a variation of it could very well be used in my project. In fact, I have already used something similar in some of my preliminary field work. Part of my project involves identifying river otter latrine sites on the Nechako River. As I continue to identify more and more latrine sites, I’ve noticed my ability to boat down the river and identify a latrine site solely based on intuition (that has come from the knowledge I’ve gained from identifying previous latrine sites) has increased quite significantly. I have found it quite satisfying to use this intuition to identify a possible latrine site, then confirm that it is indeed a latrine site through the observation of otter scat at the site.

As the material in this presentation isn’t something I’m particularly interested in, I enjoyed that Dr. Bjork presented it with enthusiasm, which in turn made me more interested in it and able to follow along without getting bored. He clearly had a tremendous amount of knowledge on the topic he was presenting and a passion to share this knowledge with his audience. His ability to look at a picture of a rare moss or lichen species and spurt out the scientific name without hesitation was incredibly impressive.

His knowledge of his topic was made clear when answering questions, as he didn’t hesitate to come up with an answer for any of the questions presented to him, no matter how difficult. In addition, rather than just giving a quick answer to a question, he often went in depth to make his response as clear as possible. I also thought it was respectable that despite having lots of knowledge, he admitted when he didn’t have the knowledge to answer a particular question.