University of Alberta research offers new guidance that can help recover habitat for woodland caribou in forests across the province’s Athabasca oilsands region. 

The study lays out a strategic method energy companies and provincial land managers can use to determine which seismic lines — narrow clearings cut into the forest for underground petroleum exploration — need human intervention to help regrow trees. 

Such restoration can help recover habitat for the caribou, designated as a threatened species. 

Knowing which of the tens of thousands of the lines crisscrossing the northern Alberta region need active restoration can help energy companies and land managers best focus their efforts, says study lead Colleen Sutheimer, a PhD candidate in forest biology and management in the Faculty of Agricultural, Life & Environmental Sciences.

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