Sharon Writes

Canadian Wildlife, July/August 2010

By Sharon Oosthoek

Assessing the impact of climate change on wildlife is tricky business. Any given year may be warmer or wetter than usual and still have nothing to do with climate change. That’s called weather.

Gambo, Newfoundland trapper Clarence Pritchett knows all about that. In his 35 years of trapping, he’s seen animals that have suffered through bad winters, and he’s seen the opposite.

This past winter was unusually temperate and animals such as otters and mink are now plump and healthy. “It’s not a pattern though,” says Pritchett. “We have good winters and bad winters. It changes drastically with the North Atlantic.”

But climate change is about patterns. Not seasonal or even yearly fluctuations, but long-term changes in temperature, precipitation, wind, and even ocean currents.

So a decade or more of unusually warm temperatures or lots of snow may signal climate change.

“In order to make that link, you have to have a long enough time series,” says Gary Stern, senior research scientist at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans in Winnipeg. “I would say 10-15 years of data on an annual basis … You have to monitor the biota (plants and animals) but you also have to the monitor the system that’s changing and try to link the two together, which is a difficult thing.”

Paul Wilson, a wildlife geneticists with Ontario’s Trent University, agrees that long-term patterns are key, and urges meticulous research to set baselines for comparison.

“I think we as scientists have to be careful we’re not jumping on the climate change bandwagon and trying to attribute everything we see to climate change,” says Wilson.

Other human-induced changes – fragmentation, pollution and introduced species – also make it hard to separate out what can and can’t be chalked up to climate change.

That’s why Jody Allair, a biologist with Bird Studies Canada, counsels caution.

‘Our scientists are finding it difficult to tease apart the variety of factors contributing to (bird) range shifts or to decipher an overall pattern,” says Allair.

Southern Yukon Tlingit elder Stanley James has also seen wildlife shifting ranges in the past few years, and like Allair, can’t say with certainty what is behind it.

“We’ve had polar bears coming down this way now, on the Dempster Highway. We have cougars coming in from the south. And then we’ve had muskox,” says James. All are unusual sightings near his home in Carcross.

“The animals know there is a change that is happening,” he says. “We used to have four feet of snow when I was on the trap line 60 years ago. Now you only have about 17 or 18 inches of snow.”

With these caveats in mind, we offer here a sampling of intriguing, and often troubling changes in the lives of Canada’s wild animals.

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Canadian Wildlife

September/October 2009

Just how much should we do for species at risk?

By Sharon Oosthoek

Rappelling down an oceanside cliff in the Bay of Fundy to secure peregrine falcon nesting boxes may seem an extreme way to restore an extirpated species.

Ditto herding massive plains bison onto huge cattle trucks and shipping them from Alberta to Saskatchewan, where their like has not been seen in more than 120 years. Not to mention sending captive-bred black-footed ferrets to boot camp to learn the ways of the wild before setting them loose.

The captive-breeding and release program ran from the early 1980s to the mid-90s and brought peregrin falcons back from the brink across the southern part of the country.

In an era where we have altered just about every habitat on earth – whether through climate change, fragmentation or pollution and invasive species – some wildlife experts are starting to argue it’s our responsibility to do whatever it takes to help species at risk.

Yet there are painful decisions to be made: Is there really any point trying to preserve a species when it’s as far gone as, say British Columbia’s 11 remaining spotted owl pairs? How do we decide which species get money and support, and which ones slip away? And given that climate change is affecting some animals’ range so dramatically, is it also up to us to create new habitat for them?

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Canadian Wildlife, May/June 2009

Lots of Refuge: Private landowners are helping wildlife find food and shelter by nurturing woodlots.

By Sharon Oosthoek

Russell McNally and his wife Marjorie bought their 81-hectare Nova Scotia woodlot about 30 years ago, fully aware that managing it would be no walk in the park. “It was not in good shape,” recalls McNally. “It had been high-graded — they targeted the best trees for lumber and shipbuilding and left the poorest ones.”

The woodlot’s location on the slopes of Nuttby Mountain near Truro, one of the highest points in the province, meant they also had to contend with high winds and heavy snowfall. And so McNally got to work, applying everything he knew about coaxing woodlands back to health. As a forest technician with the provincial Department of Natural Resources, he knew quite a lot.

McNally planted rows of fast-growing red pine on a parcel of abandoned farmland to shelter the surrounding woods from high winds. He thinned damaged and lower value trees, replanting them with more robust species native to Acadian forests. He also built nesting boxes, and created ponds both for wildlife and as insurance against fires.

And when McNally discovered two declining wild apple trees, he nursed them back to health. They reward him with a crop every few years that he shares with foraging deer and partridge.

Nearly three decades later, he and a long list of wildlife — beavers, cougars, rabbits, trout, ducks, hawks, eagles, owls and songbirds — are all enjoying the fruits of his labour.

Anecdotal evidence suggests McNally is on the vanguard of a growing movement among private landowners to rehabilitate woodlots and create a home for wildlife. Whether it’s corridors linking isolated patches of forest or full-on restoration of degraded areas, wildlife is top of mind. And in a province like Nova Scotia, where private individuals own half the land, well-managed woodlots are key to any attempt at habitat restoration.

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