Roads, Logging, and the Large-Mammal Community of an Eastern Canadian Boreal Forest

Authors
Jeff Bowman
Justina Ray
Audrey Magoun
Devin Johnson
Neil Dawson
Contacts
Resource Date:
April
2010

This resource is available on an external database and may require a paid subscription to access it. It is included on the CCLM to support our goal of capturing and sharing the breadth of all available knowledge pertaining to Boreal Caribou, Wetlands, and Land Management. 

We evaluated hypotheses concerning the distributions of large mammals in a 60 000 km2 study area that encompassed the contact zone between Ontario’s roadless north and the postlogging southern landscape. We estimated occurrence probability in 575 sample units for woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou (Gmelin, 1788)), wolverine (Gulo gulo (L., 1758)), gray wolf (Canis lupus (L., 1758)), moose (Alces alces (L., 1758)), and white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus (Zimmerman, 1780)). We used ordinations and spatial regressions to assess the contributions of parameters to species occurrence. Roads and cutovers were most abundant in the south, leading to an increased prevalence of deciduous forest. Mature coniferous forest, however, occurred most commonly in the north. Occurrence probabilities for moose and deer were greatest in the south, in close association with deciduous trees. Wolf occurrence was also greatest in the south, positively related to both deciduous forest and road density. Caribou occurrence, however, was positively related to mature coniferous forest and negatively related to both wolf occurrence and roads. Wolverine occurrence was negatively related to deciduous forest. Our surveys demonstrated distinct mammal communities in the northern and southern halves of our study area, a separation that appeared to be mediated by deciduous forest and roads.