Innovation Anthology #542:

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As oil sands development continues in northeastern Alberta, habitat is lost for animals like moose and wolves.

At the recent CONRAD Symposium on oil sands reclamation, forest ecologist Holger Bohm reported on the recent findings of WHEC, the Wildlife Habitat, Effectiveness and Connectivity Program.

According to Holger Bohm, the WHEC study area for wolves covers a 150 square kilometer strip just north of Fort McMurray.

HOLGER BOHM: We put radio collars on wolves to track their movements mainly. So that entails obviously catching them and attaching a collar to the wolf and then we get the wolf location sent to us, to the computer. And we can pretty much real life now with the new technology follow the wolves on a daily basis on the computer, seeing where they walked. Given that we are looking into connectivity, we are really interested into seeing how wolves move between mines. Do they walk along rivers or linear features. Or how do they move and where, and at what times, is really what it comes down to.

Holger Bohm says WHEC researchers have identified at least ten wolf packs in the oil sands study area, and home territories for the wolves can range from 500 to 2000 square kilometers.

Thanks today to Syncrude

I’M CHERYL CROUCHER

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Syncrude

Program Date: 2013-03-14