Dawn Bazely

Dawn Bazely is a Biology professor at York University in Toronto. She has spent nearly 30 years doing field work in many different ecosystems ranging from arctic tundra, sub-arctic and temperate salt-marshes, deciduous forests, temperate managed grasslands and prairies.

Dawn is an “applied” ecologist and she spent summers from 1980 to 1984 on Hudson Bay, west of Churchill, Manitoba, in what is now Wapusk National Park, where her experiments on grasses eaten by snowgeese, were regularly eaten by polar bears. After doing fieldwork in England on sheep grazing, and in Holland on Barnacle geese, she spent 1991-2004 doing field work in southwestern Ontario, looking at the impacts of high populations of white-tailed deer on Carolinian forest and oak savanna ecosystems. Dawn has also studied the role of fire in ecosystem dynamics along with other forms of habitat management and restoration and has active research programmes in Sweden and Norway. But, she also takes time to help local park managers understand whether their prescribed burning programme is improving the condition of the rare black oak savanna ecosystems of High Park Toronto.

Dawn is concerned with transferring the management and policy lessons learned from this research to the proposed Greenbelt around Toronto, and the Oak Ridges Moraine, where high deer densities and invasive plant species are starting to have visible impacts on the remaining natural habitats.

Dawn is currently the Director of IRIS, the York University Institute for Research and Innovation in Sustainability. She aims to increase York’s participation and leadership in Education and Outreach programmes about Sustainability.