The University of Calgary’s R. B. Miller Field Station, which turns 60 this year, is Alberta’s oldest biological research stations. Despite its small size, it is one of the most productive field research stations in the country.
The station, part of the university’s Biogeoscience Institute, is named after Dr. Richard Birnie Miller FRC, a professor at the University of Alberta who assisted the province’s Department of Lands and Forests with fisheries related inventories and problems. Miller became convinced that management problems could only be solved by careful, long-term investigation. He therefore set out to find a suitable spot for his research camp in early May 1950.
R.B. Miller in Gorge Creek in Sheep River Provincial Park.The site he chose was located next to Gorge Creek, in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in southwestern Alberta, approximately 110 km west from the U of C. Problems with trout stocking were the main driver for the location of the field site. Miller was charged with investigating why hatchery-reared trout did not survive as well as wild trout. If the results proved useful, a full-fledged research station would be established. In 1950, the Alberta Biological Station at Gorge Creek (in Sheep River Provincial Park) was established with the provincial government providing funds for the buildings and research.
What had humble beginnings soon turned into a hub of activity, including research on fish, birds, and mammals, and the R.B. Miller station started to conduct and publish cutting-edge research.
The station, part of the U of C’s Biogeoscience Institute, provides excellent facilities and a suitable research environment for local, national, and international researchers to conduct studies of fundamental and applied nature. Hundreds of world-class papers and books have been the result of intense research in and around the area advancing our understanding of the Canadian Rockies and foothills ecosystems. Last week, the New York Times reported on a long-term study by a former PhD student Marco Festa-Bianchet on the health of bighorn sheep and lambs that were observed for more than 35 years in Alberta using the field station.
In his book, A Cool Curving World, Miller describes the beginnings of this world-class ecological field station. Miller died in 1959, and in his honour the site was renamed in 1989, R.B. Miller Station.
For more information on R.B. Miller Station’s important contributions to research and management, visit: http://bgs.ucalgary.ca.
August 31, 2010
