As a research biologist, I'm always going to suggest that there is greater need for research. But I think that, on the more practical side, we often don't know how to make the right management decisions. We don't know what is the most strategic way to achieve, for example, reduced flooding in the Winnipeg area. But by conducting research and exploring alternative land use practices in strategic ways, we can adjust how lands are managed in a way that has the maximum benefit for flood protection, as well as the maximum benefit for wildlife conservation.
There are always new tools being developed so that we can do a better job of land use planning, for example, which is a very important research need right now. It's a matter of trying to figure out how to best unroll industrial development on the landscape. In western Canada for example, we have 761,000 oil and gas wells. It's not just the well pad itself that affects the landscape but all of the infrastructure that goes with it. Roads, power lines, pipelines, fragmented habitats, it's all happening willy-nilly across the landscape without any careful planning and without using best management practices to ensure that we still have wildlife on the landscape as well as industrial development.
There's an enormous opportunity and a need to improve land use planning. If there's one area that I think probably has the greatest research need today, that's where I would focus.