Grizzly Bear Research Project

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Grizzly Bear Research Project
Foothills Model Forest
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Why the Grizzly Bear?

• The presence of grizzly bears is considered to
  be an indicator of a healthy ecosystem

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Long Term Program Goal

• To provide resource managers with the necessary
  knowledge and planning tools to ensure the
  long-term conservation of grizzly bears in
  Alberta.

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Grizzly Bear Habitat
Changing landscapes and multiple uses
Status and trends
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Grizzly habitat
Status and trends
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Oil and gas sites in Alberta October 2001
Status and trends
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The Challenge
The challenge of co-existence

• Maintain grizzly bears over the long term in
  concert with sustainable development, and all
  human activities occurring in bear habitat

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Grizzly Bear Range in Alberta
Approximately 228,000 km2
Status and trends
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Key Elements of the Research Program

• Cumulative effects models

• Defining bear habitat, Measuring and quantifying
  landscape change

• Bear movement

• Status and trends - Health

• Mortality/Reproduction

• Linking landscape conditions to population status

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Research Study Area
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GPS Collars

• GPS radio collars are deployed on bears to
  obtain six locations per day for the time period
  when bears are not denning

Status and trends
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Vast amounts of location data
FMF Grizzly Bear Project 35,000 Locations 4
years
5 years
3 years
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What has been learned to date?

• Remember
• Entering our last major year of field data
  collection
• Many analysis still underway
• Preliminary results will be confirmed/modified
  based on results of 5 years of data

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Cumulative Effects Grizzly Bear Models

• Originated in Yellowstone Park a protected
  areas land base
• Have been adapted and largely accepted for other
  areas
• Have received little testing and validation
• Formed the basis for a portion of the EUB
  decision on the Cheviot Mine proposal

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Three years of detailed grizzly bear data were
utilized to evaluate the CEA model outputs
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Data from GPS collars 1999-2001
Data from Bears

• 1999 collared 19
• 2000 collared 21
• 2001 collared 23

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Bear Density by BMU
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Human Use and Habitat Effectiveness

• Output results show that changes in human use
  intensity have a significant effect on Habitat
  Effectiveness

Status and trends
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Habitat Effectiveness and DNA Data

• DNA data showing the number of unique bears found
  in each BMU was compared with the Habitat
  Effectiveness Output data

Results the model was a poor predictor of the
number of unique bears found relative to the HE
values
Status and trends
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Habitat Effectiveness and GPS data

• 24,000 GPS data points collected over a 3 year
  period were compared with the Habitat
  Effectiveness model output

Results showed that higher HE values were not
related to higher bear use
Status and trends
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Security Areas

• Analysis of security area model output also
  showed no correlation between areas of high
  security area values and bear use, or the number
  of bears found there

Status and trends
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UNUSABLE
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Grizzly Bear Movements
Movement Corridors

• The linkage zone model output from the CEA proved
  to be a poor fit in predicting how bears move
  through their home ranges

• A new approach using graph theory has proved to
  be a good predictor of bear movements

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CEA Models have Poor Predictive Ability

• Existing CEA model has poor predictive ability in
  terms of how bears are actually using the
  landscape

• Our new approaches and models have proven to be
  more useful in predicting bear occurrence and
  movement in this area

Status and trends
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Landscape Level Connections
Movement Corridors
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Remote Sensing
Closed conifer Closed deciduous Mixed forest Open
conifer Open deciduous Alpine Herbaceous lt
1800m Herbaceous Reclamation Shrub Wet Open Wet
Treed Rock Snow Shadow Water Road / Rail
line Urban Recent cut Cut 3-12 yrs. Recent burn
Status and trends
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2001 IDT Landcover Map
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Change Detection 1999 2001
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1999-2001 Change Features

• 284km roads
• 297ha mines
• 128 well sites
• 6012ha cut blocks

We are now constructing automated software for
the calculation and tracking of landscape change
through orthophotos and landsat imagery
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Resource Selection Function Models
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Individual Level/Watershed Level Models
RSF
Low
Mid
High
Validation Point
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P a r t I .
Nielsen, UofA
Population-level Models
Model Performance
Model Training dev. ROC
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Pre-Berry RSF Model for Study Area
Habitat Selection
Status and trends
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How are these maps being used?

• Provided to local LFS land use staff.
• Conoco has used these for pipeline alignment
  planning.
• Petro-Canada has used these for road placement
  and pipeline planning.
• Weldwood has used these for road planning
• CRC is using these maps for coal mining pit
  planning

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Roads and Bears
Status and trends
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Bears spending more time near open roads have a
higher risk of mortality
Mortality
Status and trends
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Roads and Bears

• Other important findings
• Female bears spend more time closer to roads
• Bears utilize riparian zones for movement
  corridors and for feeding and resting sites
• The human dimension of bears and people along
  roadways can result in management actions leading
  to the removal of a bear

Status and trends
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Roads and Bears
Preliminary analysis by MCP and 95 kernel home
range has found a strong correlation between
population level survival rates and open road
densities.
Survival Rate Road Density Low High Moderate
Moderate High Low
Status and trends
Bears exist in these areas but they dont survive
as long
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Roads and Bears - Conclusions

• Increasing unrestricted human access in grizzly
  bear habitat will likely increase bear mortality
• Increasing human access will also reduce
  available habitats for some bears
• Selecting the best locations for necessary roads
  and access control measures in identified grizzly
  bear habitat are important

Status and trends
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Status and Trends

• Provide data and develop methodologies to allow
  the assessment and monitoring of grizzly bear
  population parameters over time

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Scat Sniffing Dogs Inventory techniques

• This will represent an important new tool to use
  for grizzly bear inventory work.
• We continue to use annual DNA data to review our
  population estimates

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Grizzly Bear Health

• It would be useful to have other measures of
  population health apart from simply looking at
  numbers

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• Consider other measures of population health and
  ways to measure this
• Reproductive function
• Age of sexual maturity
• BCI

• Are there relationships between health and
  landscape conditions?

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Common Tools Being Developed

• Remote Sensing Tools to provide habitat maps for
  landscape level identification of grizzly bear
  habitat in Alberta
• GIS tools to measure and quantify landscape
  change in grizzly bear habitat
• DNA tools and procedures to census all bear
  populations
• RSF methods to predict grizzly bear occurrence
  based on habitat and human use features to
  improve existing CEA grizzly bear models
• Graph theory models to identify and predict
  grizzly bear movement corridors
• New techniques to measure and monitor grizzly
  bear population health

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RESULTS

• Science based data for use in developing land use
  policies and practices
• Data to support approaches to sustainable
  resource development.

• Testing existing models and improving them is an
  important part of adaptive management practices

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Current Program Sponsors

• Ainsworth Lumber
• Alberta Conservation Assoc.
• Alberta Newsprint
• Alberta Environment/SRD
• Anderson Resources Ltd.
• AVID Canada
• B P Canada Energy Company
• Blue Ridge Lumber
• Burlington Resources Ltd.
• Canada Center for Remote Sensing
• Canadian Hunter
• Canadian Wildlife Service
• Canfor
• Cardinal River Coals
• Conoco Phillips Ltd.
• Foothills Model Forest

• FRIAA
• GeoAnalytic Ltd.
• Inland Cement
• Jasper National Park
• Luscar Ltd..
• Millar Western Ltd.
• Mountain Equipment Co-op
• NSERC
• Oil and Gas Commission
• Petro Canada
• Precision Drilling Ltd.
• PTAC - ERAC
• Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation
• Suncor
• Sundance Forest Industries
• Sunpine Forest Products

• Talisman Energy Ltd.
• Telemetry Solutions
• Trans Canada Pipelines
• University of Alberta
• University of Calgary
• University of Lethbridge
• University of Washington
• Veritas
• Weldwood of Canada
• Western College of Veterinary Medicine
• Weyerhaeuser Ltd.
• World Wildlife Fund