¶®É«µÛ

For professor , outdoor recreation is more than leisure; it’s a relationship. In conversation, associate dean  guided the discussion by asking: What happens to people when they engage with the outdoors? 

“I’m really curious about people’s interactions with nature, and how those interactions might affect other aspects of their lives,” Harshaw says. 

Outdoor recreation is dependent on the setting. “When we think about outdoor recreation, it’s distinguished from other forms of leisure and recreation because the focus is really the outdoors. It’s kind of baked into how we talk about it,” Harshaw says. “If we don’t have outdoor settings, then we don’t have outdoor recreation.”

Those settings include forests, grasslands, parkland, water bodies — and, crucially, wildlife. Without them, the appeal of outdoor spaces diminishes.

Why is birdwatching such a fast-growing pastime?

Approximately one in five North Americans identifies as a birdwatcher, Harshaw noted, calling it “the fastest-growing outdoor recreation activity on the continent.” The range of participation in this activity is broad — from the casual backyard birdwatcher to the dedicated birder who travels across provinces or countries to catch a glimpse of a rare species.

“But if there aren’t birds to see, or there aren’t wildlife to view,” Harshaw says, “I suspect that many of these outdoor settings wouldn’t be as appealing to people.”

For the past 14 years, Harshaw has been involved in the North American Waterfowl Management Plan, a continental partnership among Canada, the United States and Mexico. Originally designed to conserve wetlands for waterfowl, the plan has since expanded to include all birds and all habitats.

That shift reflects a broader trend. Conservation of natural places and critters, Harshaw says, must be paired with access to nature. Surveys and focus groups he and his colleagues have conducted reveal familiar but stubborn barriers to participation: safety concerns, transportation challenges and inequitable access to recreation areas.

“We’re really looking at that through an EDI lens,” he says, “trying to understand why some people aren’t able to get to these places and how we can provide better opportunities for everyone to experience birdwatching and connect with nature.”

What do people really think about living alongside coyotes?

While birds bring people joy, coyotes can spark different emotions.

Harshaw has joined the long-running led by biologist , bringing in the “human dimensions” perspective. His role is to understand not the coyotes, but the people who live alongside them.

“We found that people either really enjoy coyotes — seeing them in the city as a sign that it’s still wild — or they are quite concerned about them,” he explains. Concerns, he noted, are often higher among people with young children or pets, while those who live near the river valley, Edmonton’s broad greenbelt, “tend to worry less, maybe because they’ve had more interactions and see that coyotes tend to mind their own business.”

Attacks, though they make headlines, are rare. More pressing, Harshaw mentions, are the indirect risks: diseases that coyotes carry, often transmitted through pets. “Some of these diseases can be quite nasty, and they’re not really top of mind for people,” he said.

How does the One Health approach shape your work?

Coyotes, Harshaw says, are not just survivors but problem-solvers. “Coyotes are intelligent animals. Recent work in Colleen St. Clair’s lab has shown this — they’ve put puzzles in Edmonton’s green spaces for coyotes to interact with, and filmed them with camera traps. Coyotes are curious and clever.”

“People feed coyotes because they want to help or because they think it’s fun, but it creates challenges. When people feed coyotes, it habituates them to humans. They’re not as frightened of people as they normally would be, and that increases the likelihood of interactions. It can also make coyotes food-dependent on garbage and compost. That creates additional reasons for them to be around people at times they wouldn’t normally be, even during the day,” says Harshaw.

He frames this work through the approach, a global framework that recognizes the interdependence of people, animals and the environment. “Healthy people, healthy environments and healthy wildlife are all interrelated,” he says. “We can’t really have one without the other two.”

What are the challenges of working across disciplines?

For Harshaw, the science is only part of the puzzle. The other part is the collaboration required to study human-wildlife interactions. “It’s fun, and it’s challenging — but mostly fun,” he says, describing work that spans social scientists, wildlife biologists, economists and, increasingly, health and veterinary researchers. “I’m not sure if it’s multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, or transdisciplinary; maybe it’s all three at various times,” he says. 

“We need to manage outcomes so they’re good for people, good for wildlife and good for the environment,” he says. That requires weaving together very different forms of evidence, from animal density maps to human behaviour surveys, and reconciling different disciplinary timelines and methods.

Which species are you studying next?

As the conversation winds down, Harshaw notes that his focus is expanding to other species that embody both cultural meaning and ecological stress — from boreal caribou in northern Alberta to Pacific salmon in British Columbia.

“Salmon is almost an iconic species for British Columbia, yet it is under threat from human use and climate change,” he says. “The question is: How can we continue to do the things we do, maybe changing how we do them, so that wildlife and habitats can persist?”

In Harshaw’s telling, whether it is a birder watching from a window or a jogger glimpsing a coyote in the river valley, each encounter is part of a larger story. People do not simply use natural spaces; they build relationships with them. And in those relationships lie the seeds of both care and responsibility.