scholarly journals Using caribou knowledge in expanding the Wabakimi protected area

Rangifer ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 18 (5) ◽  
pp. 183 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter N. Duinker ◽  
Ted R. Armstrong ◽  
Bruce T. Hyer ◽  
Bruce Petersen

When Wabakimi Wilderness Park was created in 1983, conservation of woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou) was one of the primary considerations. Twelve years later, in April 1995, the Government of Ontario announced that the Park, measuring some 155 000 ha, was to be expanded into a ca. 890 000 ha protected area. This was done following 2.5 yr of deliberations of the Wabakimi Park Boundary Committee. The Committee tried to reach consensus on an expanded protected area by examining a variety of options in terms of criteria related to a range of key values, one of which was woodland caribou. The analysis procedure involved dividing the 1.25-million-ha study area into more than sixty "assessment units". These were defined primarily on the basis of approximate sub-watershed boundaries. Each assessment unit was ranked on a five-level scale with respect to goodness for each value, including seasonal caribou habitat. High-value habitats for wintering, calving, and migration dominated the assessment of habitat importance for caribou.The initial assessment phase included six park expansion concepts ranging in size from just over 200 000 ha to about 1 million ha. One of the concepts (about 750 000 ha), was based specifically on the caribou value. In the second phase, four refined options were examined, ranging from just under 600 000 to roughly a million ha. Two additional options were added to the four and submitted to the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources for consideration. The Committee was, in the end, unable to reach full consensus on which of the final options to recommend. However, upon consideration of the Committee's final report and other input, the Ontario Government announced in April 1995 the more than five-fold expansion. The new protected area contains about 475 000 ha of high-value caribou habitat. Caribou were a key value in determining both the ultimate size and configuration of the expansion.

Rangifer ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 89
Author(s):  
Paula R. Bentham

Since 1985, woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou) have been designated as a threatened species in Alberta. Populations studied since the 1970s have been stable or declining, with no population increases documented. Resource expansion into previously undeveloped areas and associated increases in access have been implicated as possible causes for the declines. To facilitate development on caribou ranges, while ensuring the integrity and supply of caribou habitat, standing committees have been formed. The primary role of the committees is to act as advisory bodies to the government and to search for effective and efficient industrial operating guidelines. Recent research has been conducted on the responses of woodland caribou ecotypes to increased human and predator access. Based on this research, operating guidelines have been refined and implemented through Caribou Protection Plans. I discuss how the current operating guidelines are put into practice and linked to the Environmental Assessment process within the Oil Sands Region of Alberta. In particular, I discuss the origination of impact predictions, specific mitigation measures to reduce impacts and monitoring.


Rangifer ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher J.A. Wilkinson

The Government of Ontario has legal responsibilities to protect and recover the province’s population of forest-dwelling woodland caribou, which is classified as a threatened species. Loss and fragmentation of habitat caused by commercial timber harvesting, land clearing, and linear disturbances such as road building have resulted in range recession. Ontario’s Woodland Caribou Conservation Plan (2009) serves as the provincial government’s response to a recovery strategy. This paper contends that the likelihood of success for this conservation plan is low as it focuses on mitigating rather than eliminating threats, relies on the unproven and circumspect hypothesis that woodland caribou will re-occupy logged habitat, and lacks clarity and details on implementation. Sound government action focused on protection and recovery is needed to prevent the imperilment and extirpation of this species at risk.


Rangifer ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 159 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald D. Racey ◽  
Edward R. Armstrong

A management strategy for woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou) habitat is being developed in northwestern Ontario. This strategy is based upon a set of draft Timber Management Guidelines for the Provision of Woodland Caribou Habitat. These guidelines recommend maintaining a sustainable supply of winter habitat within large tracts of old forest, protecting calving areas and minimizing human disturbance. Due to the large temporal and spatial scale of caribou habitat management, an ecosystem-based approach is recommended. Public response to the strategy shows a strong dichotomy between environmental and utilitarian values among all the major stakeholder groups. The major issues raised by the public include security of industrial wood supply, quality of the knowledge base, level of awareness of caribou, economic impacts on remote communities, concern about environmental impacts and silvicultural know-how. The government is responding to these concerns as the strategy evolves. Current emphasis is placed on increasing awareness of the public, training resource managers in caribou biology, management and habitat planning, implementing interim habitat management prescriptions and studying the potential impact on wood supply. The final direction for a northwestern Ontario strategy to conserve woodland caribou habitat has yet to be decided, although a commitment has been made to strive for the conservation of woodland caribou populations and their habitat.


1999 ◽  
Vol 77 (7) ◽  
pp. 1017-1024 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald W Kuzyk ◽  
Michael M Dehn ◽  
Richard S Farnell

Information from radiotelemetry studies has shown that woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou) living in the snow-shadow region of the southwest part of the Yukon spend part of the winter in the subalpine and alpine zones. Other woodland caribou living in areas with high snowfall in central and eastern Yukon have traditional winter ranges in forested lowlands. We theorize that selective forces exerted by the wintering environments will have induced differences in caribou body characteristics, and we test the hypothesis that woodland caribou that winter in the alpine zone are phenotypically different from those wintering in forested environments. We compared five physical measurements from 382 female woodland caribou in 11 Yukon herds. Our results indicate a significant (14 cm) difference in shoulder height between forest- and alpine-wintering groups, but provide no support for the hypothesis that the difference is due to snow depth. There were no significant differences in other body measurements or in body proportions. It is also unlikely that the difference in shoulder height is due to winter nutrition, since body condition scores did not differ between forest- and alpine-wintering groups. We discuss seasonal nutrition, predation, and migration as alternative explanations for our results.


Author(s):  
Philip Martin

Labor markets have the three R functions of recruiting workers, remunerating them to encourage them to perform their jobs satisfactorily, and retaining experienced and productive workers. Employers in one country and jobs in another complicate these three Rs, especially recruitment, which is why both employers and workers often turn to private recruiters to act as intermediaries between jobs and workers. Recruiters are most deeply involved in the second phase of the four-phase labor migration process—matching workers with jobs. Indeed, the fact that recruiters rarely visit the workplaces to which they send workers, and do not always expect to send more workers to particular employers, reduces their incentives to make good worker–job matches.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (13) ◽  
pp. 7347
Author(s):  
Jangwan Ko ◽  
Seungsu Paek ◽  
Seoyoon Park ◽  
Jiwoo Park

This paper examines the main issues regarding higher education in Korea—where college education experienced minimal interruptions—during the COVID-19 pandemic through a big data analysis of news articles. By analyzing policy responses from the government and colleges and examining prominent discourses on higher education, it provides a context for discussing the implications of COVID-19 on education policy and what the post-pandemic era would bring. To this end, we utilized BIgKinds, a big data research solution for news articles offered by the Korea Press Foundation, to select a total of 2636 media reports and conducted Topic Modelling based on LDA algorithms using NetMiner. The analyses are split into three distinct periods of COVID-19 spread in the country. Some notable topics from the first phase are remote class, tuition refund, returning Chinese international students, and normalization of college education. Preparations for the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT), contact and contactless classes, preparations for early admissions, and supporting job market candidates are extracted for the second phase. For the third phase, the extracted topics include CSAT and college-specific exams, quarantine on campus, social relations on campus, and support for job market candidates. The results confirmed widespread public attention to the relevant issues but also showed empirically that the measures taken by the government and college administrations to combat COVID-19 had limited visibility among media reports. It is important to note that timely and appropriate responses from the government and colleges have enabled continuation of higher education in some capacity during the pandemic. In addition to the media’s role in reporting issues of public interest, there is also a need for continued research and discussion on higher education amid COVID-19 to help effect actual results from various policy efforts.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 2184
Author(s):  
Zhiqi Yang ◽  
Jinwei Dong ◽  
Weili Kou ◽  
Yuanwei Qin ◽  
Xiangming Xiao

Plantations of Panax notoginseng (PN), traditional herbal medicine for the prevention and treatment of vascular diseases, are expanding rapidly in China, especially in the Yunnan province of China, due to its increasing demands and prices and causing dramatic environmental concerns. However, existing information on its planting area and spatial distribution are limited. Here, we mapped the PN planting area by using a new integrated pixel- and object-based (IPOB) approach, the Random Forest (RF) classifier, and the high-resolution ZiYuan-3 (ZY-3) imagery. We improved the procedures of classification in three aspects: (1) a new spectral index—Normalized Difference PN Index (NDPI)—was proposed, (2) the efficiency and scale of segmentation were optimized by using the Bi-level Scale-sets Model (BSM), and (3) feature variables were selected through an iteration analysis from 99 feature variables (spectral, textural, geometric, and geographic). Compared with the pixel- and the object-based methods, the IPOB has the highest F1 score of 0.98 and also has high robustness in terms of user and producer accuracies (97% and 99%, respectively), following by the object-based method (F1 = 0.94) and the pixel-based method (F1 = 0.93). The high accuracy was expected since the target class has very distinctive spectral and textural characteristics. Although all three approaches showed reasonably high accuracies due to the application of the NDPI and optimized procedures, the result showed the outperformance of the proposed IPOB approach. The framework established in this study expects to apply for regional or national PN surveys extensively. The information on the area and spatial distribution of PN can guide the government on policy making for the planting and exporting of traditional Chinese medicine resources.


2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 407-413
Author(s):  
Allan Effa

In 2015 the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada concluded a six-year process of listening to the stories of Canada’s First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples. More than 6000 witnesses came forth to share their personal experiences in listening sessions set up all across the country. These stories primarily revolved around their experience of abuse and cultural genocide through more than 100 years of Residential Schools, which were operated in a cooperative effort between churches and the government of Canada. The Commission’s Final Report includes 94 calls to action with paragraph #60 directed specifically to seminaries. This paper is a case study of how Taylor Seminary, in Edmonton, is seeking to engage with this directive. It explores the changes made in the curriculum, particularly in the teaching of missiology, and highlights some of the ways the seminary community is learning about aboriginal spirituality and the history and legacy of the missionary methods that have created conflict and pain in Canadian society.


2016 ◽  
Vol 46 (7) ◽  
pp. 914-923 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan L.W. Ruppert ◽  
Marie-Josée Fortin ◽  
Eldon A. Gunn ◽  
David L. Martell

The fragmentation and loss of old-growth forest has led to the decline of many forest-dwelling species that depend on old-growth forest as habitat. Emblematic of this issue in many areas of the managed boreal forest in Canada is the threatened woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou (Gmelin, 1788)). We develop a methodology to help determine when and how timber can be harvested to best satisfy both industrial timber supply and woodland caribou habitat requirements. To start, we use least-cost paths based on graph theory to determine the configuration of woodland caribou preferred habitat patches. We then developed a heuristic procedure to schedule timber harvesting based on a trade-off between merchantable wood volume and the remaining amount of habitat and its connectivity during a planning cycle. Our heuristic can attain 84% of the potential woodland caribou habitat that would be available in the absence of harvesting at the end of a 100 year planning horizon. Interestingly, this is more than that which is attained by the current plan (50%) and a harvesting plan that targets high volume stands (32%). Our results indicate that our heuristic procedure (i.e., an ecologically tuned optimization approach) may better direct industrial activities to improve old-growth habitat while maintaining specified timber production levels.


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