Early Successional Wildlife Dynamics and Monitoring

The Early Successional Wildlife Dynamics (ESWD) program is a long-term, multi-taxa wildlife monitoring initiative designed to evaluate the effectiveness of upland reclamation in providing suitable habitat for wildlife within the mineable area of the Athabasca Oil Sands Region (AOSR). The following project goals were fully achieved (additional goals were partially met): 1) Develop wildlife use profiles across a range of forest stand treatments, with a focus on mature forests as the desired end point of reclamation. 2) Develop a rapid assessment method for wildlife data collection in reclaimed habitats. 3) Assess the re-establishment of early successional wildlife communities on reclaimed land. 4) Collect long-term wildlife data to support oil sands operators in meeting their habitat reclamation commitments.

The study’s findings indicate that wildlife communities are progressively becoming more similar as forest stands age. Songbird communities differed significantly among the various forest treatments; however, some older reclaimed sites exhibited bird communities trending toward those found in mature forest habitats. While it remains too early to determine if reclaimed habitats will fully support viable wildlife populations equivalent to those in natural mature forests, the data suggest promising developments. A suite of vertebrate species was identified that could potentially serve as indicators of mature forest habitat conditions. Sampling Recommendations: 1) Increase sample sizes, especially in mature forest treatments. 2) Include reclaimed sites older than 30 years post-reclamation to better understand long-term trends. 3) Consider alternating sampling years for certain sites or aligning sampling frequency with vegetation development stages (seral stages) in reclaimed plots. 4) Implement modified (reduced) sampling protocols for songbirds and small mammals, as these have been shown to yield data comparable to that of the full baseline dataset.