Innovation Anthology #148: Writer and Consultant
An invasion has quietly occurred in the forest of northeastern Alberta. The invaders are whitetail deer.
And in ten short years, their arrival has had a devastating impact on woodland caribou. That’s because deer go into the northern peatlands where caribou live. And wherever deer go, wolves are not far behind. As a result, caribou are no longer safe and their numbers are dropping.
Why deer are spreading into the peatlands is a concern for Dr. Stan Boutin. He holds the Research Chair in Integrated Landscape Management at the University of Alberta.
DR. STAN BOUTIN: One might be that climate is changing, The second one is that industrial activity are creating forest cover types that are good for deer. And that’s usually young, scrubby, more open type of vegetation. And that change then leads to the deer expanding into areas The third one is, we’re simply seeing the species expand their range out of core habitat. And good habitat in Alberta for whitetail deer is this interface between the agriculture and woodlots and that. And so its actually agriculture that is quite an important driver.
Thanks today to the CHAIR IN INTEGRATED LANDSCAPE MANAGEMENT
Learn more at InnovationAnthology.com
I’M CHERYL CROUCHER
Guest
Robert Bott,
Independent, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-bott-b067a15
Sponsor
NSERC Industrial Research Chair in Integrated Landscape Management
The Integrated Landscape Management Chair is developing a toolkit for ecologically informed land use planning. At the heart of this toolkit is a suite of models capable of integrating multiple land use activities over large areas and long time scales to explore the future impacts of todays land use decisions. The models do this by linking human actions to indicators of ecological, economic, and social condition. They are constrained by their ability to adequately represent the dynamics of complex systems, and our current research emphasis aims to reduce the uncertainties over the impacts of invasive organisms on species at risk in Canadas boreal forest.
The ILM Chair is an initiative of the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Alberta, with sponsors and collaborators in academia, government, and the private sector.
Program Date: 2008-07-03