Chris Hart

M.Sc. Student

A fascination with wildlife and a growing curiosity for how they interact with their environment are the driving factors behind my research. My main interests involve the habitat and resource selection processes that drive animal movements and behaviours. My project investigates the effect of changing population density on these processes and how this relates to the connectivity among populations within a meta-population. I will be working in partnership with Isabelle Schmelzer and the NL Wildlife Division to apply my question to the different herds that make up the caribou population of southern Labrador. As a threatened population we need to learn more about how they are using the land available to them, and how this changes over time. Gaining an understanding of the evolutionary ecology of species at risk can have important implications for conservation and management practices.