Restoration Prioritization 3.0

Caribou population decline has been described as an existential threat to oil sands development, and multiple management actions are needed to address this. Habitat restoration is a cornerstone management action, and to deploy it effectively, planning tools appropriate for various scales in space and time are required to determine where to complete restoration and to determine what tactics and prescriptions must be used. The objective of this project was to prioritize townships for the restoration of linear features within five caribou ranges in northeast Alberta: Cold Lake, East Side of the Athabasca River, Red Earth, Richardson, and West Side of the Athabasca River. In Versions 1.0 and 2.0 of this project, each township’s priority was based on the potential increase of undisturbed caribou habitat that could be achieved through linear feature restoration, accounting for both the restoration cost and the potential for future resource development.

Version 3.0 of this project builds on previous township prioritization work in Versions 1.0 and 2.0 and adds guidance for four additional objectives: (1) incorporate caribou habitat value into township-level prioritization; (2) integrate restoration with predicted future industrial disturbance, including both energy and forestry; (3) consider decision-support guidance at multiple spatial scales, from regional, to township-level, to individual lines, to specific sites along individual lines, in consideration of operational restoration planning, logistics, and treatment requirements; and (4) include additional collaborators and stakeholders to broaden the scope of the analysis and ensure relevance of the project outcomes.