Wildlife usage indicates increased similarity between reclaimed upland habitat and mature boreal forest in the Athabasca Oil Sands Region of Alberta, Canada.

ABSTRACT: While there is no denying that oil sands development in the Athabasca Oil Sands Region (AOSR) has large impacts upon the habitat it disturbs, developers are legally required to return this land to "an equivalent land capability." While still early in the process of reclamation, land undergoing reclamation offers an opportunity to study factors influencing reclamation success, as well as how reclaimed ecosystems function. As such, an Early Successional Wildlife Dynamics (ESWD) program was created to study how wildlife return to and use reclaimed upland boreal habitat in the AOSR. Wildlife data comprising 182 taxa of mammals, birds, and amphibians, collected between 2011 and 2017 and from five oil sands leases, were compared from multiple habitat types (burned [BRN], cleared [CLR], compensat

SUBMITTER: Hawkes VC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6548362 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature