Multispecies modelling reveals potential for habitat restoration to re‐establish boreal vertebrate community dynamics

Abstract

The restoration of habitats degraded by industrial disturbance is essential for achieving conservation objectives in disturbed landscapes. In boreal ecosystems, disturbances from seismic exploration lines and other linear features have adversely affected biodiversity, most notably leading to declines in threatened woodland caribou. Large‐scale restoration of disturbed habitats is needed, yet empirical assessments of restoration effectiveness on wildlife communities remain rare. We used 73 camera trap deployments from 2015 to 2019 and joint species distribution models to investigate how habitat use by the larger vertebrate community (>0.2 kg) responded to variation in key seismic line characteristics (line‐of‐sight, width, density and mounding) following restoration treatments in a landscape disturbed by oil and gas development in northeastern Alberta. The proportion of variation explained by line characteristics was low in comparison to habitat type and season, suggesting short‐term responses to restoration treatments were relatively weak. However, we found that lines with characteristics consistent with restored conditions were predicted to support an altered community composition, with reduced use by wolf and coyote, thereby indicating that line restoration will result in reduced contact rates between caribou and these key predators. Synthesis and applications. Our analysis provides a framework to assess and predict wildlife community responses to emerging restoration efforts. With the growing importance of habitat restoration for caribou and other vertebrate species, we recommend longer‐term monitoring combined with landscape‐scale comparisons of different restoration approaches to more fully understand and direct these critical conservation investments. Only by combining rigorous multispecies monitoring with large‐scale restoration, will we effectively conserve biodiversity within rapidly changing environments.

A synthetic review of terrestrial biological research from the Alberta oil sands region: 10 years of published literature

“…Idiosyncratic species responses to landscape disturbance are a common thread across taxa in monitoring studies from the OSR, and mammal monitoring work has demonstrated that consideration of a complexity of covariates may be required when assessing the impacts of landscape disturbance. For example, various levels of seismic line regeneration, snow cover, human use, line density, and line width can differentially alter the magnitude and direction of occupancy rates for different species (Tattersall et al, 2020a ), and the effect of these covariates likely changes at different temporal and spatial scales (Beirne et al, 2021 ; Tattersall et al, 2020b ). Consequently, while species‐level focused monitoring may be useful for indicator or focal species, this approach may be too resource‐intensive for widespread application.…”

Behavioral “bycatch” from camera trap surveys yields insights on prey responses to human‐mediated predation risk

“…Sixty CT sites were on seismic lines and 13 were off of seismic lines. On‐line sites were further stratified by restoration category (treated, regenerating, unrestored control, human use; details in Beirne et al, 2021 ). In the Richardson study area, CTs were deployed in November 2017 and 2018 at 57 sites stratified by in (27) vs. out (30) of burned area and on (18) vs. off (39) of a seismic line, with year‐round sampling continuing until November 2019 (Burgar & Burton, 2019 ).…”

“…At each CT site, we quantified line of sight (LOS) as an indicator of habitat openness, under the assumption that ungulates would be less likely to use more open habitats with greater visibility, where the risk of predation may be higher (Dickie et al, 2020 ). Previous analysis showed that LOS was a useful descriptor of variation in linear feature conditions with respect to wildlife use in the Algar landscape (Beirne et al, 2021 ). We measured LOS (in m) along the seismic line or game trail perpendicular to the camera.…”

“…The direct and indirect effects of predation are key drivers of dynamics for caribou and their interacting species, as they are in many other conservation contexts (Gaynor et al, 2021 ; Serrouya et al, 2015 ). Management efforts to recover caribou have focused primarily on reducing predation risk by reducing predator abundance (Serrouya et al, 2019 ) and restoring habitat to reduce predator movements (Beirne et al, 2021 ; Tattersall et al, 2020 ). If successful, such efforts will alter the “landscape of fear” for prey species, leading to changes in risk‐related prey behaviors (Laundré et al, 2010 ).…”

Camera trapping in ecology: A new section for wildlife research

“…Camera-trap research spans the ecological hierarchy, with applications to animal behavior (Caravaggi et al, 2017(Caravaggi et al, , 2020 such as diel activity (Frey et al, 2017;Rowcliffe et al, 2014), populations (Bischof et al, 2020;Gardner et al, 2010), species' distributions (Rich et al, 2017;Tobler et al, 2015), and wildlife communities (Ahumada et al, 2011;Wittische et al, 2021). With adequate inferential logic and analysis, more complex ecological processes such as species interactions can also be discerned (Beirne et al, 2021;Clare et al, 2016;Niedballa et al, 2019). The field is rich for the planting seeds of new ideas.…”