Dr. Boutin’s work takes place in the heart of Alberta’s Oil Sands and extends across Western Canada, where conservation challenges are immense and economic stakes are high. This creates an excellent opportunity to study large-scale systems undergoing rapid human-induced change. A “poster child” for this situation is the woodland caribou, whose threatened status and large-scale habitat requirements make it an interesting case that challenges Canada’s Species at Risk Act (SARA). Through a major effort to build collaborations with industry and government, Alberta now has one of the most comprehensive pictures of woodland caribou population dynamics in the country. The Boutin lab has done foundational research to determine the proximate cause of widespread caribou declines and has proposed innovative conservation actions. We are at a critical stage of caribou recovery in Alberta and Western Canada, creating the opportunity to implement and monitor a series of innovative recovery experiments.