Godman Salvin Prize

It is fitting that Kathy has focused her career on understanding the dynamics and resilience of bird communities in alpine and forest environments. Like the northern and alpine bird communities she has spent much of her career studying, resilient and adaptable are the words I would use to describe Kathy. As anyone who has spent time in the field with Kathy will attest, she is one of the toughest field researchers out there, and even after 40 years of fieldwork she can be found stomping through alpine habitats, conducting field work in northern British Columbia, Canada and the Andes mountains of Chile. The roots of this resilience can be traced to her farm upbringing in rural Prince Edward Island, Canada where the focus was on problem solving, hard work, family, and friends. This background has also given Kathy an eclectic and in-depth knowledge on subjects ranging from farming with horse-drawn machinery, running a riding school and dog training. Kathy is a highly productive scientist, having produced over 200 research papers and book chapters on avian ecology, behaviour, life history and conservation, ranging from alpine and arctic grouse to cavity-nesting forest bird communities in the Americas. She started her academic career at the University of Prince Edward Island in Canada's smallest province (BSc, 1970). Kathy completed her MSc at the University of Alberta (1973), and a PhD with Fred Cooke at Queen's University, Ontario (1985). Kathy held faculty positions at the Université de Sherbrooke (1988–89) and University of Toronto (1989-92) before moving to her current position in British Columbia as a Research Scientist with Environment and Climate Change Canada and Professor with the Faculty of Forestry at the University of British Columbia. Guided by her ecological mentors, Fred Zwickel, Susan Hannon and Fred Cooke, Kathy used field studies on poorly-studied species and ecosystems to examine the responses of bird populations and communities to strong environmental variability. From her MSc supervisor, Fred Zwickel, Kathy learned the strengths of using carefully-defined field experiments as well as a passion for the ecology of the Tetraoninae. Her PhD work took her to northern Canada to ask questions on the costs and benefits of male parental care in Willow Ptarmigan (the only ptarmigan with male parental care). After her PhD, Kathy shifted from a behavioural ecology framework to a life history lens, beginning comparative population research for arctic and alpine birds. Kathy's work on high-elevation bird communities has focused on understanding the life history trade-offs that allow alpine birds to develop a slow life style in these extreme mountain environments. This required multi-annual studies, measuring the survival and reproduction of alpine specialist and generalist songbirds and grouse. Most recently, her research has focused on bird communities in the temperate mountains of North and South America during the breeding and post-breeding seasons. The autumn stopover is the period of highest biodiversity, a 3-month period when one-third of bird species breeding in North America, many of conservation concern, use mountain habitats; a period that is longer than the breeding season for most temperate species. This work has highlighted the considerable conservation value of temperate mountains to avian biodiversity in the Americas. Kathy's alpine bird research programme demonstrates how maintaining connectivity across elevation gradients can support the resilience of avian communities to environmental change. When Kathy took up her joint Government-University position on forest bird ecology in British Columbia, she initiated a long-term study, assessing and tracking the responses of the forest bird community to anthropogenic and natural disturbances. A major focus of this work was evaluating the dynamics of cavity-breeding birds and other wildlife in the face of harvesting and insect outbreaks in central British Columbia. The Nest Web model of community structure and function for tree-cavity-using birds that she developed and first published with John Eadie in 1999 has proved to be one of her most important theoretical and conservation legacies, and has been a major focus of work in Kathy's lab, producing more than 80 publications. Kathy was one of the first researchers to follow the resource use in natural tree cavities and to assess the productivity of the entire community of cavity-using vertebrates. Kathy recognized that tree cavity-dependent species persisted in hierarchically-organized communities structured around the production and survival of tree cavities, and that the dynamics of the system was being negatively impacted globally by forest harvesting and other anthropogenic activities. Little did she know that her approaches would provide baseline data collected at the epicenter of one of the largest ecological disturbances experienced in North America, the Mountain Pine Beetle outbreak. Her long-term data allowed the tracking of the responses of avian communities to this large scale disturbance, demonstrating surprising resiliency among species. Kathy's Nest Web model for cavity nester community organization (The World Wide Nest Web!) has been adopted globally for studies of cavity-using vertebrate communities, influencing researchers in North and South America, Europe, Asia and Australia. Kathy's contributions to ornithology extend well beyond her research endeavours. She has been an inspiring mentor to more than 50 graduate students and post-docs, most of whom have gone on to their own careers in ornithology. In all her students Kathy has rooted a deep passion for field ecology; all of her students have tales of her astonishing stamina in the field. For example, one former student recounted how Kathy would spend 1 week chasing White-tailed Ptarmigan on Vancouver Island, the next in the interior of BC completing day and night bird surveys for the NestWeb project, followed by a quick stint in the Yukon to complete her work on alpine and forest grouse. Although her guidance and enthusiasm clearly elevated the work of her students, many commented on the refractory period required after her visits to engage in such “non-essential” field activities as food, laundry, and sleep! Kathy has also worked tirelessly on behalf of the ornithological community, both in Canada and internationally. She currently serves as the President of the American Ornithological Society and is a past president of the Society of Canadian Ornithologists. Kathy has served on the Board of Directors and National Science Advisory Committee for Bird Studies Canada, as a Canadian representative to the IUCN/ICBP Specialist Group for the Conservation of Galliformes, and as a Canadian member of the International Ornithological Union. She has been Associate Editor for Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, The Auk, The Condor, Avian Conservation and Ecology and others. Her contributions have been recognized with previous research awards (Doris Huestis Speirs Award for Outstanding Contributions to Canadian Ornithology, 2008 and Ian McTaggart-Cowan Life Time Achievement Award, 2016). Kathy's impressive research record and career has been focused on linking ornithological science and research to on-the-ground resource management and conservation, making her a highly deserving recipient of the Godman Salvin Prize. She has managed to link communities, both ecological, and personal, across the world. Congratulations Kathy - you continue to inspire all of us with your energy and passion for ornithology and ecology! Elsie A. Krebs

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