The Linkage Lunch program was launched to engage, inform, connect, and motivate our Missoula community around landscape conservation.
The general focus of Linkage Lunches are presentations from experts to discuss conservation of habitat, connectivity, wildlife, water, or wildness…and all things in between. They may have a local, statewide, nationwide, or global context. But our goal is that each presentation will include some level of connection to how each of us can help tackle connectivity conservation at home in some way.
Come join the Center for Large Landscape Conservation and other practitioners, agency staff, conservation professionals, and any interested members of the public in these exciting lunchtime talks. You won’t want to miss it! Bring your lunch, if desired. All are welcome!
Ospreys are unique fishing raptors, and we are lucky they are so abundant along the rivers and lakes in Montana. Since they are at the top of aquatic food chains, they can tell us a lot about the health of our rivers and streams. They also migrate thousands of miles, and so their yearly cycles depend on landscapes across hemispheres. In the next Linkage Lunch talk, Erick Greene will give an overview of the biology of this fascinating bird and tell you about their migration patterns and longevity. He will also summarize his long-term studies on heavy metals in Ospreys, and what that tells us about the clean-up of the Upper Clark Fork River — the largest EPA Superfund site in the US.
Erick Greene is Professor Emeritus in the Division of Biological Sciences and in the Wildlife Biology Program at The University of Montana. He grew up in Quebec, Canada, with twin passions for music and nature. Erick dropped out of high school and lived for a year in the Galapagos Islands, working as a researcher on Darwin’s Finches. He then worked on seabirds 800 miles north of the Arctic Circle with the Canadian Wildlife Service. He returned for undergraduate studies at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he studied biology, music and mathematics. He fell in love with Ospreys in Nova Scotia, and has been studying them ever since. He then received a PhD from Princeton University. He was the Director of UM’s Bird Ecology Lab, and has broad interests in behavior, ecology, evolution and conservation. For many years he has collaborated on Osprey research and education with Rob Domenech and RaptorView Research Foundation.
Banner photo: Lolo Creek, Lolo National Forest, Montana – Adobe Stock
