Search

Development of hydrocarbon resources across northwest Canada has spurred economic prosperity and generated concerns over impacts to biodiversity. To balance these interests, numerous jurisdictions have adopted management thresholds that allow for limited energy development but minimize undesirable impacts to wildlife. Used for exploration, seismic lines are the most abundant linear feature in the boreal forest and exist at a variety of widths and recovery states. We used American marten (Martes americana) as a model species to measure how line attributes influence species’ response to seismic lines, and asked whether responses to individual lines trigger population impacts. Marten response to seismic lines was strongly influenced by line width and recovery state. Compared to forest interiors, marten used open seismic lines ≥ 3 m wide less often, but used open lines ≤ 2 m wide and partially recovered lines ≥ 6 m wide similarly. Marten response to individual line types appeared to trigger population impacts. The probability of occurrence at the home range scale declined with increasing seismic line density, and the inclusion of behavioral response to line density calculations improved model fit. In our top performing model, we excluded seismic lines ≤ 2 m from our calculation of line density, and the probability of occurrence declined > 80% between home ranges with the lowest and highest line densities. Models that excluded seismic lines did not strongly explain occurrence. We show how wildlife-derived metrics can inform regulatory guidelines to increase the likelihood those guidelines meet intended management objectives. With respect to marten, not all seismic lines constitute disturbances, but avoidance of certain line types scales to population impacts. This approach provides the ecological context required to understand cause and effect relationships among socio-economic and ecological conservation goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT The development of hydrocarbon resources in northwestern Canada has resulted in a vast network of seismic lines. Seismic lines are a conservation concern because they are believed to alter the use of space by predators and ultimately change predator-prey relationships. Such changes are believed to be a key factor influencing declines in boreal woodland caribou ( Rangifer tarandus caribou). Using remote wildlife cameras, we measured the behavioral response of a known caribou predator, the black bear ( Ursus americanus), to seismic lines at 2 spatial scales. At the line scale, we compared black bear use of lines that varied in width and vegetation recovery state to undisturbed forest interior locations. At a 5-km2 scale, we compared the probability of bear use across a continuum of seismic line density. At both spatial scales, we also tested for an interaction between bear use of seismic lines and use of upland and lowland forest types. Black bears used most types of seismic lines more frequently than undisturbed forest interior and upland forest more than lowland forest. We found no evidence of an interaction between lines and forest type, as the relative difference in seismic line versus forest interior use was the same in lowland and upland forest. At the 5-km2 scale, we found no evidence of increased use of lowland forest in areas with greater seismic line density. Thus, seismic lines did not appear to increase black bear use of lowland forest types per se. However, bears used seismic lines more than forest interiors, which might alter their ability to locate and capture caribou and other ungulate prey, thereby creating the potential for altered predator-prey dynamics in landscapes with seismic lines. Bears do not appear to use seismic lines ≤2 m wide more often than the forest interior. We suggest that where new seismic lines are constructed, those seismic lines should be a maximum width of 2 m to reduce the potential for altered predator-prey dynamics in areas being developed for oil and gas extraction. © 2014 The Wildlife Society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]