Managing forests for Woodland Caribou in Northwestern Ontario is challenging due to the need to balance habitat protection with competing ecological, cultural, and economic interests, particularly in areas with active resource development and natural disturbances. The Working Group explored how different forest management strategies, including the current Dynamic Caribou Habitat Sequence and alternative scenarios, affect caribou habitat, moose populations, and socio-economic outcomes—revealing significant trade-offs between ecological preservation and human use.
Why is managing our forests for Woodland Caribou challenging?
Managing land-use in Ontario is a complex balance between managing resource development and ensuring long-term sustainability of cultural, social and environmental values. A working group representing industry, governments, non-governmental organizations, and academia formed in 2022 to assess how different caribou-related land management strategies impacted various indicators that encompassed socio-economic values as well as other wildlife and environment values in two caribou ranges in Northwest Ontario. The Northwest Ontario Multi-Species Adaptive Management Working Group (the “Working Group”) recognized that as science and information are ever evolving, there may be gaps in our understanding of caribou management and recovery. In response, the Working Group set out to explore and compare potential outcomes and trends associated with various landscape management strategies, within and outside of current policy, for caribou habitat and the resulting impact on other forest values. The outcomes of this project may help inform land management strategies that can benefit caribou while simultaneously minimizing the impacts on other values.
Where was this analysis performed and why was this area chosen?
The Government of Ontario currently recognizes fourteen woodland caribou ranges. The Brightsand and Churchill caribou ranges (2,207,133 and 1,998,846 hectares respectively) in Northwestern Ontario were selected as a study area (Figure 2). These ranges are home to highly active natural resource extraction operations and development, outdoor recreational tourism, alongside natural disturbance pressures such as wildland fires. As woodland caribou populations are extremely sensitive to landscape disturbance, the aforementioned landscape influences made this an ideal location to assess multiple management scenarios while tracking an array of indicators in caribou ranges where all parties of the Working Group have vested interests.
Figure 1. Map of Churchill and Brightsand caribou ranges and the overlapping forest management units
What is the current process for woodland caribou management and what new options is the project exploring?
The primary strategy to manage caribou habitat in Ontario is currently the implementation of a Dynamic Caribou Habitat Sequence (DCHS). The DCHS aims to provide a stable supply of suitable and undisturbed habitat in large contiguous tracts while emulating natural disturbances in a manner that will cycle and maintain said habitat into the foreseeable future. This management strategy was used to provide a baseline throughout the project, acting as the primary comparison point.
From a forestry perspective, caribou mosaic timing blocks (Figure 3) are the mechanism by which the DCHS is implemented. Mosaic blocks attempt to concentrate forest industry disturbance in the caribou range in specific areas so that the majority of the range is maintained as large tracts of undisturbed mature conifer (spruce, pine and fir) forests, the habitat that woodland caribou rely on. The figure below provides an example of how mosaic blocks work to achieve the aims of the DCHS.
Figure 2. Example of the function of caribou mosaic blocks in the DCHS strategy
The current approach to DCHS implementation increases the area of contiguous mature conifer forest, which reduces moose habitat and, in turn, reduces the attractiveness of the area for big game predators such as wolves. While this approach is intended to benefit the woodland caribou populations, there are trade-offs. For example, it may result in a reduction of moose habitat, a key species for Indigenous communities.
The Working Group explored multiple alternate scenarios to gauge the short-term sensitivity and long-term impacts on forest structure, wildlife habitat, eco-social indicators. This involved adjusting maximum harvest volumes, adjusting the amount of retained undisturbed habitat adjusting habitat definitions, as well as running scenarios under different policy regimes. In comparison to current management directives, the scenario maintaining a strict adherence to the federal recovery strategy’s minimum of 65% undisturbed habitat shows an increasing trend over 150 years for habitat indicators but decreasing trend for social-economic indicators including moose productive food area (indicators for moose are considered social-economic as they are tracked to support hunting outfits and community sustenance). Furthermore, this approach moves the forest landscape beyond the simulated range of natural variation and therefore the availability of the additional habitat may be tenuous with an increase risk from natural disturbances. In contrast, the scenario which forest harvest is increased we observe an increase in social-economic indicators but this creates a decrease in habitat indicators, including undisturbed caribou habitat.
As you can see, there are many trade-offs with different management approaches. We’ll explore these more in the next blog. Stay tuned.
Funding for this work comes from the Ontario Caribou Conservation Stewardship Program, part of the Species at Risk in Ontario Stewardship Program.
