Gord Stenhouse, Karen Graham, and Terry Larsen accepting the award in Calgary. Photo: Ken Greenway
The 2025 ASTech Awards celebrated the achievements of the Grizzly Bear Program. Gord Stenhouse, who founded and led the team for 23 years, had these remarks:
“I am deeply honored to accept this ASTech Award on behalf of an extraordinary team. This is truly a team award – our research group brings together biologists, geneticists, remote-sensing specialists, veterinarians, statisticians, ecologists, and even helicopter pilots.
“I’d like to give special recognition to my colleagues Karen Graham and Terry Larsen, who have joined me here this evening – thank you for both your outstanding efforts and leadership in the success of our research program.
“We are grateful to our many funding partners in Alberta’s forestry, oil and gas, and mining sectors, and to the provincial and federal agencies across our 23 years of grizzly bear research.”
The program has contributed practical knowledge and planning tools that have allowed for science-based management of bears and bear habitat, leading to better co-existence between grizzly bears and people in Alberta.
The program’s many successes under Gord’s leadership include producing accurate population surveys, developing better methods for studying grizzly bears, providing recommendations for road density thresholds, the GBTools planning software, and contributing to hundreds of peer-reviewed papers and the theses of over 50 graduate students who are now making their own impacts.
Today, the Grizzly Bear Monitoring Project builds on this legacy, ensuring that our partners in government and industry have current information and up-to-date tools to successfully manage this iconic species.
