Wayne McCrory

RPBio, Winner 2024 Basil Stuart-Stubbs UBC Prize for Masterful Storytelling

George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in Literature

As a long-practicing registered professional biologist (RPBio) in British Columbia, Wayne McCrory has had a wide range of experience in wildlife research, environmental impacts, cumulative effects analysis, and management/conservation issues in western Canada. He has headed numerous research projects, including on Chilcotin free-roaming horses, mammal inventory in Yoho National Park, grizzly bears, black bears, western toads, mountain goats, Roosevelt elk, spirit (Kermode) bears, and other species, some through working with First Nations.  He has produced numerous wildlife reports for Tsilhqot’in First Nations over a long time period. Over the past 20 years, his research on wild horses in the BC Chilcotin has included field research on habitat use and response to wildfires as well as genetic studies. He has also worked with the Xeni Gwet’in-Tsilhqot’in Nation on a wild horse management plan and guidelines for wildlife and wild horse tourism viewing. He has produced or co-authored three reports on Chilcotin wild horses is the co-author of two peer-reviewed scientific papers related to wild horses, one on the diet of Chilcotin wolves and the other on the spread of the domestic horse across the Americas, which won the prestigious 2024 AAAS Newcomb Cleveland Prize for outstanding contribution to science. In 2015/2016 and 2024 he produced professional reports on feral horse management in Alberta. He has produced over 100 wildlife reports and worked with many different film companies. His recently published a book on his wild horse research titled The Wild Horses of the Chilcotin: Their History and Future recently won several awards including  the 2024 Basil Stuart-Stubbs Prize for the best scholarly book by a Canadian author on a BC subject. It was also given a starred review by the US Booklist for a work judged to be outstanding in its genre.