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Sarah Saldanha
MSc candidate
sr926877 'at' dal.ca
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I’ve always been interested in animal
behaviour, but it was only after my first field
experience working on the nesting habitat of barred
owls and goshawks that I truly became interested in
research. This experience led me to complete my BSc
at McGill in Agriculture and Environmental Sciences
with a specialization in Wildlife Biology in 2013.
During my BSc I was lucky to gain additional
experience working on the nesting behaviour and
habitat selection of red-headed woodpeckers (a
species at risk) and the effects of landscape
features on wild bee diversity and pollination
efficiency. Although these projects differed in many
ways, they both had a strong focus on conservation,
which greatly appealed to me. I believe there is a
lot of value in wildlife research that can be
directly applied to species protection and
management.
In fall of 2013, I started my MSc in the Leonard lab
working on the bank swallow, a species that has
suffered from a 98% population decline in the last
40 years. Using a combination of automated and
manual telemetry, I will characterize this species’
foraging and roosting habitat and study the effects
of weather conditions, social organization and
breeding biology on its habitat use. By using new
technology to answer the old, previously
unanswerable question, of what habitat these birds
require to forage and roost, I hope to help guide
future conservation management programs for this
species.
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