Grassland Ecology

Dr. Christian Artuso is a conservationist and ornithologist with the Canadian Wildlife Service, Environment and Climate Change Canada. 

Christian is a deep believer in Indigenous-led stewardship and in enabling Indigenous worldviews to change society’s approach to conservation. He has a passion for languages, speaking six. He has spent many years learning Anishinaabemowin (and about other Indigenous languages), which has deeply shaped his conservation ethic. He has given hundreds of presentations on natural history and conservation to a wide variety of audiences and uses blog posts and social media for outreach. He has trained many young biologists in field methods and identification and run capacity-building workshops for Indigenous Nations and others. He enjoys travelling and wildlife photography, having photographed 4,500 species of birds, including some of the first known photographs of rare species. His photos appear in many magazines, books, and other media. His recent book, including all his own photographs, is entitled Our Feathered Friends : A Bird’s-Eye View of Canada.

In his current role, Christian has a strong focus on grassland conservation and on sharing his love for this underappreciated and imperilled ecosystem. He will present on the status of our grassland birds and on the many conservation initiatives he supports or partners with such as the Central Grasslands Roadmap, the Indigenous Kinship Circle, the kihci-okāwīmāw askiy Knowledge Centre, as well as full life-cycle efforts such as the Sustainable Grazing Network in Mexico and the Grasslands Alliance in the pampas ecosystem of Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay and Argentina, both important non-breeding grounds for migratory grassland birds.

He has a PhD from the University of Manitoba, writing his thesis on the effect of human density on Eastern Screech-Owls. Christian coordinated the Manitoba Breeding Bird Atlas (2010 – 2014), and for some years the Manitoba Nocturnal Owl Survey and the Breeding Bird Survey in Manitoba. He is a member of the Bird Specialist Subcommittee of the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC), the Manitoba Important Bird Area Program, the Manitoba Chimney Swift Initiative, the Delta Marsh Bird Observatory, and the Manitoba Ornithological Records Committee. He has published many articles and received the Cliff Shaw Award for outstanding contributions to the Blue Jay (Nature Saskatchewan peer-reviewed journal) in 2007, Nature Manitoba’s Ernest Thompson Seton Award in 2020, the Conservation Award of the Manitoba Chapter of The Wildlife Society in 2024 and a Diversity, Inclusion and Employment Equity award from Environment and Climate Change Canada’s Science and Technology Branch in 2025.