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FIELD WORK

Making a Home in a Disturbed Landscape

The word “mining” brings certain images to mind: noisy and large machinery, piles of rocks and overturned trees, and stripped away vegetation. These may seem like hostile conditions for wildlife such as nesting birds, but what happens after the mining stops and the dust settles?

As vegetation regrows, some bird species may flourish in an old mine while others that were there before mining may not re-establish. Which species are winners or losers in this new environment, and how long does it take for them to return?

CLIMATE

Burning Trees: Not a Good Way to Solve the Climate Crisis

For several years, Wildlife Conservation Society Canada scientists based in Yukon have been drawing attention to the ecological and climate impacts of the Yukon Government’s proposed expansion of using wood (aka biomass) to fuel boilers to heat large buildings in Whitehorse and other communities.

In June 2023, we submitted the following Letter to Yukon News in response to Yukon economist’s Keith Halliday’s analysis of biomass impacts on Yukon’s economic and climate ledgers.

Northern Mountains and Yukon

Wolverine

Big picture conservation solutions

Freshwater Fish

WCS Canada scientists get their boots muddy studying wildlife and wild places across Canada in hopes of spurring action to address our growing biodiversity crisis.

Learn More

Bats

Wild Places

Arctic Mammals

Ontario Northern Boreal

Our work to save wildlife

Conservation

Saving Species at the Edge of Extinction

When we wipe out a species, it is not only the loss of something unique. The biodiversity that humans depend on to survive is also eroded.

WCS Canada's Director of National Conservation, Daniel Kraus, said there is no real choice. “Ensuring clean water and clean air, and diverse and abundant wildlife, is not really a trade-off because if we lose all of those things, we lose the foundation for economy and society.”

BIODIVERSITY

Next steps for Canada: Developing a plan to end biodiversity loss

Helping steer 196 countries to arrive at a consensus agreement for “halting and reversing biodiversity loss” was no small accomplishment for Canadian representatives at the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) negotiations in Montreal this past December. But now the even more challenging work of implementing the agreement has begun with the official launch on May 15th of Canada’s consultation on a 2030 Biodiversity Strategy for Canada.

Halting and reversing biodiversity loss is not going to be an easy or straightforward task. But just as with climate, it is vital that we reset our relationship with the natural world before it is too late.

Latest publications

Once upon a time in Mexico: Holocene biogeography of the spotted bat (Euderma maculatum)
Holocene-era range expansions are relevant to understanding how a species might respond to the warming and drying climates of today. The harsh conditions of North American deserts have phylogenetically structured desert bat communities but differences in flight capabilities are expected to affect their ability to compete, locate, and use habitat in the face of modern climate change. A highly vagile but data-deficient bat species, the spotted bat (Euderma maculatum), is thought to have expanded its range from central Mexico to western Canada during the Holocene. With specimens spanning this latitudinal extent, we examined historical demography, and used ecological niche modeling (ENM) and phylogeography (mitochondrial DNA), to investigate historic biogeography from the rear to leading edges of the species’ range. The ENM supported the notion that Mexico was largely the Pleistocene-era range, whereas haplotype pattern and Skyline plots indicated that populations expanded from the southwestern US throughout the Holocene. This era provided substantial gains in suitable climate space and likely facilitated access to roosting habitat throughout the US Intermountain West. Incongruent phylogenies among different methods prevented a precise understanding of colonization history. However, isolation at the southern-most margin of the range suggests a population was left behind in Mexico as climate space contracted and are currently of unknown status. The species appears historically suited to follow shifts in climate space but differences in flight behaviors between leading edge and core-range haplogroups suggest range expansions could be influenced by differences in habitat quality or climate (e.g., drought). Although its vagility could facilitate response to environmental change and thereby avoid extinction, anthropogenic pressures at the core range could still threaten the ability for beneficial alleles to expand into the leading edge.

Nesting Ecology of the Barn Swallow on Agriultural Lands in Yukon
ince the 1980s, the abundance of the Barn Swallow (Hirundo rus-tica) in North America, including the far north, has declined. To better understand the species’ biology north of 60° N, near the northern limit of its range, and in a region of expanding agriculture, we studied its nesting ecology on farms in southern Yukon Territory, Canada, in 2019 and 2020. We followed 21 attempted nests in 2019, 20 in 2020, of which 52% and 60%, respectively, were inside buildings with permanently open entrances. Other nests were built on the outside of buildings. In both years we inferred successful double brooding by three pairs, which is rarely reported north of 60°N latitude. We found the swallows’ reproductive output to be similar to that at temperate latitudes: first clutches ranged from three to six eggs (mean 4.8 in 2019; 4.2 in 2020); second clutches may have averaged marginally smaller (n = 6). The mean number of fledglings per nest was 3.3 in 2019 and 3.0 in 2020. Twenty-one percent of nests failed, either by falling off a vertical substrate or because of predation by deer mice (Peromyscus spp.), Black-billed Magpies (Pica hudsonia), or domestic cats. We also compared the air temperatures at nests, usually near building roofs, to ambient temperatures, finding them on average 1.6°C warmer than temperatures outside buildings. We set out 33 platforms and 20 wooden cups designed for Barn Swallow nesting but over the two years of our study the birds did not use any of them.

Microbial isolates with Anti‑Pseudogymnoascus destructans activities from Western Canadian bat wings
Forsythe, A. et al. (incl. Lausen, C.L.). 2022. Scientific Reports 12:9895

Efficacy and ethics of intensive predator management to save endangered caribou
Johnson, C.J., Ray, J.C and St-Laurent, M-H. 2022. Conservation Science and Practice e12729

Developing a national level evidence-based toolbox for addressing freshwater biodiversity threats
Reid et al. (incl. O'Connor, C.M.). 2022. Biological Conservation 269:109533

Coupling validation effort with in situ bioacoustic data improves estimating relative activity and occupancy for multiple species with cross-species misclassifications
Stratton, C. et al (incl. Lausen, C. and Rae, J. ). 2022. Methods in Ecology and Evolution. 2022;00:1-16.

Quantifying firebrand production and transport using the acoustic analysis of in-fire cameras.
Quantifying firebrand production and transport using the acoustic analysis of in-fire cameras. Thompson, D. K. et al. (incl. Yip, D.A.) Fire Technology

Activity, heart rate, and energy expenditure of a cold-climate mesocarnivore, the Canada lynx
Menzies, A. et al. (incl. Seguin, J.). 2022 Canadian Journal of Zoology

WCS Canada newsletter

WCS Canada's newsletters have stories about our scientists in the field, interesting insights about wildlife and important conservation alerts.

Latest policy comments

WCS Canada comments on Canada Gazette Part 1 Volume 157 Number 25 Regulations, 24-07-2023
WCS Canada’s response to the public consultation conducted by Canadian Wildlife Service on the Regulations Amending the Wild Animal and Plant Trade Regulations regarding the international trade of elephant ivory and rhinoceros horn.

WCS Canada comments on the NRL TISG and PP, 21-07-2023
WCS Canada’s comments on the draft Tailored Impact Statement Guidelines and draft Public Participation Plan developed by the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada to support the federal impact assessment process for the Northern Road Link project – the central portion of what would ultimately be the access road to the Ring of Fire in northern Ontario.

WCS Canada Comments - Forest Degradation
WCS Canada’s recommendations to the Canadian Council of Forest Ministers on the draft definition of the term “forest degradation”. This follows a workshop in June, and submission of previous comments in April, 2023.

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Photo credits: Banner | Susan Morse © News | Mountain landscape: Susan Morse ©, River: Maitland Conservation Authority ©, Caribou: Don Reid © WCS Canada, Peatlands: Mike Oldham | Bat with WNS © NPS/Creative Commons License | Mosaic: Northern Mountains: Hilary Cooke © WCS Canada, Wolverine: Susan Morse ©. Brook Trout: Engbretson Underwater Photography ©, Bat: Cory Olson ©, Wild Places: Hilary Cooke © WCS Canada, Ontario River: Constance O'Connor © WCS Canada, Caribou: Susan Morse © | Black-capped chickadee © Malcolm Boothroyd | Yukon mining: Chrystal Mantyka-Pringle © WCS Canada.