A burning question: The spatial response of woodland caribou to wildfire in northeastern Alberta

• Author / Creator

  Konkolics, Sean

• The Canadian Federal Recovery Strategy for woodland caribou classifies areas burned by wildfire in the last 40 years as disturbed habitat for woodland caribou. This delineation of fire disturbance has major economic and social implications across Canada. Caribou have been shown to avoid burned areas, but our understanding of the implications of burned habitats on survival is unclear. Previously, studies used coarse mapping techniques that failed to delineate unburned residual patches within the burn complex, which have recently been proposed to provide undisturbed habitat for caribou. To assess the importance of burns and unburned residual patches, we examined the multi-scale resource selection of these two landcovers and the implications of using burns to adult survival of caribou for 201 individuals dispersed among six Alberta caribou populations. We found that caribou avoided both the burn complex and unburned residual patches in all seasons. However, increased use of burned habitats did not influence survival, while use of uplands significantly decreased survival. Collectively, these results suggest that burns and the corresponding residual patches are indeed low-quality habitat for caribou; however, a negligible survival effect suggests the classification of burned habitat as disturbed may be overstated by current recovery strategy recommendations. This study provides important information for herd-level management decisions and defining critical habitat under the federal mandates.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • survival
  • recovery strategy
  • residuals
  • Alberta
  • woodland caribou
  • wildfire
  • caribou management
  • Rangifer tarandus caribou

• Graduation date

  Spring 2020

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Master of Science

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-4s5r-jp80

• License

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