Population dynamics and critical habitat of woodland caribou in the boreal shield of Saskatchewan

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Woodland caribou are classified as Threatened in the boreal forests of Canada. Caribou of the Saskatchewan Boreal Shield are faced with high levels of forest fire, but are exposed to some of the lowest levels of human activity in the country. They are also among the least studied of populations. In fact, the Saskatchewan Boreal Shield is the only one of 51 caribou ranges currently identified as data deficient by Environment Canada with respect to status, trend, and definition of critical habitat. Initiating research on this special population is of both provincial and national importance. In addition to providing perhaps our last opportunity to study the ecology of woodland caribou in a large, naturally regulated population (serving as a baseline reference for the rest of the country), uncertainty as to the local status of caribou has important implications for the people that live and work in Saskatchewan. In the absence of data, communities and companies of the Saskatchewan Boreal Shield face regulatory delays and costs to investment with respect to development, and little guidance as to how activities must be mitigated to allow for acceptable practices under the Species at Risk Act. Of particular concern are implications for developing access and infrastructure for northern communities and sustainably developing natural resources (especially mining gold and uranium; the latter occurs nowhere else in Canada and accounts for 17% of the world's production). Our proposed research is aimed at reducing uncertainty as to the status of caribou in a region fundamentally important to the Saskatchewan and Canadian economies while identifying novel means by which to define critical habitat for species. Our primary goals are to understand how caribou habitat and populations respond to conditions of high natural but low anthropogenic disturbance, and how we can define critical habitat by relating survival and reproduction of individual caribou to their unique experiences of the environment (including habitat, fire, predation risk). We present a 5-year plan founded in basic and applied ecology to study woodland caribou habitat in northern Saskatchewan, the population and behavioural ecology of caribou, and that of their natural predators (wolves and black bears).