The latest issue of The Canadian Field-Naturalist (CFN) will soon arrive in the physical mailboxes of those with printed copy subscriptions. The Canadian Field-Naturalist is the official journal and publication of record for the Ottawa Field-Naturalists’ Club (OFNC). The current issue is already posted online at https://www.canadianfieldnaturalist.ca/index.php/cfn.

This issue has eight manuscripts, covering freeze-dried turtles, Red-eared Sliders nesting in the Greater Toronto Area, wolf teeth from Greenland, marine invertebrates in south-coastal British Columbia, effects of burns and clear-cuts on Caribou in Newfoundland, effects of anthropogenic disturbance on Chimney Swift nesting in Manitoba, an observation of an interaction between a mammalian and avian predator and their prey, and eight years of observations on Grizzly Bear activity in relation to spawning Kokanee salmon abundance.

The Manning Fund continues to help offset publication costs for some manuscripts and allows the OFNC to achieve some of its objectives: “publish the results of research in all fields of natural history and to diffuse information on these fields as widely as possible”.

Both the studies on marine invertebrates and bears and fish were completed as parts of undergraduate student programs which typically do not cover publication charges. The article on marine invertebrates examines diversity in a marine protected area from two older studies (1973 and 1989) and a more recent survey (2015). The study illustrates opportunities and general challenges in compiling and comparing historical data sets with those collected more recently.

The study on bears and fish is based on observations from a commercial bear viewing company and provincial government counts of spawning Kokanee. One such observation resulted in this issue’s cover photograph. Similar to what is known from bear and salmon interactions along coastal rivers, when landlocked Kokanee salmon numbers are up, so too are bear observations along the inland river. The study was only possible because of the collaboration and combination of long-term community science and government datasets. This manuscript is the Feature Article for 136(4), and has been made freely available online.

OFNC members can freely access the entire current and past issues online. Contact Bill Halliday to obtain instructions on how to create an account on the CFN website.

Enjoy!

Dwayne Lepitzki, Ph.D.
Editor-in-Chief