Moose population in BC has been on a sharp decreasing course (70% reduction) in the recent years due to a mix of inevitable and hard to change reasons and facts. Sadly the great Mother Nature cannot be defied easily as the technology to control climate and blood lust American black bears and cougars is still way beyond our reach, thus the duty really falls on our shoulder to reduce the negative impacts on moose’s habitats to improve not only quantity but the quality as well. Being not only a lovely (small vehicle driver: really?) creature, but also a good indicator of forest biodiversity, a mixed forest with appropriate amount of clearcuts composed of a good portion of both burned and unburned softwoods and hardwoods will be greatly favored by them.

During the presentation, Dr. Roy Rae was energetic and could go on and on about moose and other staff related, and I personally appreciate the way he mixed both hard cold fact of charts and tables with a good chunk of jokes together. I was able to grab the important pieces of information while still enjoying the presentation right through it. Small activities keep everyone (at least me) awake enough and I like the way he used to stress the point by not showing figures and numbers but to quote how many time a “should” word was stated by the Chief Forester in another speech. The conclusion slide summed up the take away point nice and smoothly while leaving some space for us to think about this issue carefully.

During the Q&A session, I would like to say that Dr. Roy Rea was offering personal opinions and comments rather than direct answer to some of the questions, and phrases like “I don’t know the answer to your question” did show up with honesty, although most of these questions seemed likely to be out of the scope of this particular research and he, in fact, pointed out some sources and/or directions if the questioner was to pursuit better answer and explanation. Once the question’s within the good strike zone of his expertise, he offered great detail and knowledge while having the questioner’s knowledge background in mind. By giving a rough sketch to clearly, I know this sounds weird, “rough but clear”, show the different effect of herbicides on subalpine comparing to normal logging operations which could leave the root alive, continuing to “mine” nutrients deeper enough without competitions was a great example.

Although I cannot find a particular component that I would like to apply to my research, I still enjoyed this presentation very much.