Forest Co-op Caribou PVA Modeling Project
The Forest Co-op Caribou Population Viability Analysis (PVA) Modeling Project is a cornerstone of a major collaborative scientific study to evaluate the long-term viability of woodland caribou populations. This project, completed in mid-2009, began with Forest Co-op 10th Year Anniversary funding to develop a spatially explicit PVA model based on existing data from Ontario. The initial work of the PVA model was used to successfully obtain $252,000 in collaborative funding from the NSERC Strategic Grant Program to evaluate a suite of factors that may potentially influence risk to woodland caribou in the boreal zone including forest harvest, road construction, and changes in the abundance of moose, deer, and wolves. Part of this effort involved the development of computer models based on realistic patterns of woodland caribou movement, survival, and interaction with other species across large boreal forest landscapes. These so-called PVA models allow for the evaluation of the long-term impacts of various man-agement policies that could be responsible for historic patterns of range retraction and caribou population decline.
These initial models were based on summary data on caribou vital rates, current and historic patterns of occurrence, spatial movement patterns, habitat selectivity, and links between these variables and regional densities of wolves, moose, deer, forest habitat changes and human harvesting that could be compiled. However, in order to develop accurate models, accurate estimates of parameters for key demographic and ecological processes are also needed. Hence, as stated above, the Forest Co-op PVA Modeling Project is only the cornerstone to a much larger scientific program, the Forest Co-op Caribou Habitat & Population Program, which is currently in the development stages. This exciting new collaborative initiative will include detailed field studies on vegetation community structure, caribou demography, seasonal migration and home range behaviour, habitat use, caribou foraging behaviour and energetic, predation rates, and rates of non-predation mortality and offspring recruitment. The comprehensive field study will require the co-ordinated talents of mul-tiple scientists, field staff, and graduate students, working as a team. Thus, the goal to develop a reliable PVA model that can be used to reliably consider alternative resource management practices to sustain caribou in the boreal forest is well on its way to being achieved.