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Jan. 26, 2009
Welcome to the first issue of On the Wild Side, WCS Canada’s e-newsletter. Through this newsletter we hope to keep our colleagues and supporters informed about the great wildlife conservation work being done by WCS across Canada. The newsletter will appear approximately six times a year and we welcome any comments or suggestions, which can be emailed to wcscanada@wcs.org. Information on subscribing and unsubscribing is at the bottom of the newsletter.
Counting caribou (and much more)
Accurate assessments of wildlife populations, particularly for key indicator species, are critically important to developing good wildlife conservation and land-use plans. This past year, WCS Canada staff have been in the air over Northern Ontario surveying wolverine, caribou, wolf, and moose. The surveys took place in February 2008 in the traditional areas of four First Nations communities covering 30,000 square kilometres. Survey methods were based on protocols developed by WCS Canada and our partners (The Wolverine Foundation and Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources) in the Ontario Wolverine Project, which were recently published in the Journal of Wildlife Management and as a manual for wolverine survey and monitoring co-published with the OMNR.
The results of this work will be very valuable, especially for helping First Nations with land-use planning in areas that are hotspots for mining staking and exploration or that will be part of the newly announced government-led land-use planning initiative in the 450,000 square kilometre Northern Boreal region. Larry Yesno, a member of the Webequie First Nation participated as an observer during the surveys. The work was led by WCS Canada Executive Director Justina Ray.
Fishy business
WCS Canada scientific researcher Jenni McDermid has been diving into the world of freshwater fish with further research in Ontario’s boreal region. In particular, she has been looking at the impact of fishing on lake trout with a study that is assessing abundance and size of lake trout in two northern lakes before and after they became open to fishing after 20 years. WCS Canada has also arranged for DNA analysis of lake sturgeon samples from dammed and undammed river systems to better understand how habitat fragmentation affects their genetic variability. Both of these pieces of work will play an important role in informing land-use planning and conservation work in Ontario’s boreal region from an aquatic perspective.
An Arctic Year
WCS Canada’s Yukon-based scientist Don Reid is one of the lead biologists in an International Polar Year (IPY) project, called Arctic Wildlife Observatories Linking Vulnerable EcoSystems (ArcticWOLVES). This four-year (2007-2010), $2.5 million project, funded primarily by the Canadian federal government is focusing on the projected impact of climate change on the structure and function of arctic tundra wildlife communities and ecosystems. Don organized and directed the spring, summer and fall field work on Herschel Island and Komakuk Beach, northern Yukon that quantified abundance of insects, small mammals, raptors and carnivores, and overall ecosystem productivity. For the this second year of field work, the team found that shorebirds and perching birds were breeding as much as ten days earlier than in the middle 1980s. However, the relative abundance and distribution of red and arctic foxes had not changed significantly in that time period despite substantial such changes in other arctic regions.
Growing Nahanni
The work of WCS Scientist John Weaver has contributed to a commitment by the federal government and First Nations to vastly expand 
Nahanni National Park in the NWT. John’s first report (2006), Big Animals and Small Parks: Implications of Wildlife Distribution ad Movements for Expansion of Nahanni National Park Reserve, demonstrated the inadequacy of the existing park boundaries for protecting grizzly bears, Dall’s sheep, and woodland caribou. John’s latest report (2008), Conserving Caribou Landscapes in the Nahanni Trans-Border Region Using Fidelity to Seasonal Ranges and Migration Routes, further underscored the insufficiency of the park’s current boundaries for protecting caribou. In fact, Nahanni caribou make some the longest round-trip migrations on record for woodland caribou at almost 500 km. and return again and again to the same calving, summer and rut ranges. John mapped out a trans-border (Yukon-B.C.) caribou conservation area, including specific areas that should be included in the expansion of Nahanni National Park. Altogether, the new parks currently being recommended by Parks Canada and First Nations for the Nahanni area would protect about 38,000 km2. The Prime Minister has indicated his support for the expansion, and we are anticipating a decision by Environment Canada soon. John is now turning his attention to climate change, specifically the role of beaver in conserving fresh water and wetlands along the Rocky Mountain foothills in the face of drought.
The Nahanni reports are available at www.wcscanada.org /publications.
Reaching across boundaries
As part of a global wildlife research network, WCS Canada has a unique opportunity to
reach beyond national boundaries, and this is exactly what we are doing with our work in the Northern Appalachian /Acadian ecoregion. As partners of the transboundary Two Countries, One Forest Conservation Initiative, we are helping to identify conservation opportunities in this trans-national region that extends from New York State to Nova Scotia. WCS Canada’s mapping expert Gillian Woolmer has developed an online Atlas of the area’s natural and human values derived from analyses of vulnerability and importance across the region.
The online Atlas was primarily developed as a tool to give conservation groups in the region access to maps and data to help them identify local conservation priorities and to maintain ecological connections for wildlife, but it has also shown itself to be a is a great tool for engaging public interest in the conservation values of the region. Last spring, Gillian delivered seven one-day Atlas workshops attended by government agencies, ENGO’s, land trusts, foundations, colleges and universities. The content of these workshops was designed to provide a solid overview of the Atlas and to train participants (local conservation planners and land managers) on how to use all the tools of the Atlas.
The online Atlas home page at: www.2C1Forest.orgt/Atlas
For Atlas interactive maps go to: atlas.2c1forest.org/maps.html?m=human_footprint&g=Human_Footprint
Caribou and the North
WCS Canada executive director Justina Ray and World Wildlife Fund’s Monte Hummel have collaborated on a fabulous book about an icon of Canada’s north – caribou. The book, Caribou and the North: A Shared Future provides a great introduction to caribou biology and also outlines the significant threats facing this keystone species. The book’s theme can be summed up in the phrase, so succinctly put by the Robert Redford who contributed the book’s foreword; “So go caribou, so goes the north”. This book, with the aid of spectacular photos lays out a practical, pro-active strategy for caribou conservation. The book was launched at a gala at Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum attended by more than a hundred conservation partners. Justina and Monte have recently completed a round of book tours across Canada and are distributing books to key decision-makers across Canada.
You can order a copy online of Caribou and the North directly from its publisher, Dundurn Press or, check your local book store.
Wildlife Day
WCS Canada is committed to not just gathering knowledge, but to sharing it with conservation colleagues, decision makers and the public. We held our first Wildlife Day in Toronto focusing on wildlife in Ontario’s boreal forest in March 2008. Presentations from WCS researchers and others were followed by a lively question and answer session. We hope to make these sessions a regular event.
Send us an email at wcscanada@wcs.org if there are other briefings of this nature that you would be interested in.
2008 Publications
Last year was another productive publishing year for WCS staff as we work to share our findings with colleagues and conservationists across North America. A number of these reports and articles are available at www.wcscanada.org /publications.
Kays, R.W., M.E. Gompper, & J.C. Ray. 2008. Landscape ecology of eastern coyotes based on large-scale estimates of abundance. Ecological Applications 18:1014-1027.
Long, R., P. MacKay, W.J. Zielinski, & J.C. Ray, eds. 2008. Non-invasive Survey Methods for Carnivores. Island Press, Washington, D.C.
Weaver, J.L. 2008. Conserving caribou landscapes in the Nahanni trans-border region using fidelity to seasonal ranges and migration routes. Wildlife Conservation Society Canada Conservation Report No. 4. Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Woolmer, G., Trombulak, S.C., Ray, J.C., Doran, P.J., Anderson, M.G., Baldwin, R.F., Morgan, A. and Sanderson, E.W. 2008. Rescaling the Human Footprint: A tool for conservation planning at an ecoregional scale .Landscape and Urban Planning. Vol 87 Issue 1. p 42–53.
Koen, E.L., J. C. Ray, J. Bowman, F.N. Dawson and A.J. Magoun. 2008. Surveying and Monitoring Wolverines in Ontario and other Lowland Boreal Forest Habitats: Recommendations and Protocols. Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, Northwest Science and Information, Thunder Bay, ON. NWSI Field Guide FG-06. Available at: www.wcscanada.org/media/file/wolverine-web.pdf
Baldwin R.F., Trombulak, S.C., Beazley, K., Reining, C., Woolmer, G., Nordgren, J. and Anderson, M. 2008. The Importance of Maine for Ecoregional Conservation Planning. Maine Policy Review, Volume 16, Issue 2. p 66-77.
The Northern Appalachian/Acadian Ecoregion: Priority Locations for Conservation Action. Trombulak, S.C., M.G. Anderson, R.F. Baldwin, K. Beazley, J.C. Ray, C. Reining, G. Woolmer, C. Bettigole, G. Forbes, and L. Gratton. 2008. Two Countries, One Forest Special Report No. 1. October 2008
On the Wild Side is published six times a year for
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