Understanding and tracking landscape change and animal health for effective management and conservation of species at risk

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Resource managers must understand the impacts of human-caused landscape change on wildlife populations in order to make informed decisions concerning resource utilization and conservation. This research project will determine relationships between landscape structure and change and the health of grizzly bear populations in Alberta and contiguous grizzly bear habitat areas to inform and enable management of the landscape. Our working hypothesis is that negative effects of landscape change on grizzly bear populations arise largely as a consequence of long-term physiological stress in individual bears. Understanding the underlying mechanisms is critical for resource managers to ensure the conservation of this species at risk. Our research objectives are to: (1) enhance geospatial tools for the monitoring of landscape structure with particular emphasis on detecting changes likely to cause adverse health effects to resident grizzly bears, (2) develop a technique for detecting long-term physiological stress in grizzly bears, (3) determine relationships between long-term physiological stress and other measures of health (longevity, growth, reproduction, immunity, and activity) in grizzly bears, and (4) establish linkages between the health profiles of individual grizzly bears and the landscape structure and change within their home ranges along a gradient of human use. Detailed maps linking landscape structure with grizzly bear occurrence and health will be developed. Combined with predictive models of the effects of landscape change, these maps will provide resource managers, both in industry and government, with a better understanding of grizzly bear health and resource selection and grizzly bear response to human activities in order to implement appropriate land management decision-making. Although the proposed research concentrates on a single species and its environment, the significance and application of the research is much broader. We are pioneering a new approach to evaluating and monitoring the effects of landscape change on wildlife population health. Both the approach and the tools to be developed hold promise for future application to other species at risk and, more generally, better conservation of wildlife populations.