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Chase Caribou Road Restoration Program - Year 1 (2023-2024) Summary Report
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2024
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The Chase Caribou Road Restoration Program (CCRRP) is a collaborative initiative led by Tsay Keh Dene Nation and Chu Cho Environmental, with the goal of restoring linear disturbances, primarily forest roadways, within the Chase Caribou herd range. Since the program initiation in 2018, the CCRRP has successfully restored approximately 40 kilometers of roads, including Caribou Flats Road (2019), Lay Creek (2020), Goldway (2021). The restoration of linear features is a recommended recovery action identified in the Federal Recovery Strategy for Southern Mountain Caribou, to make the road or linear features less suitable for predator travel and alternate prey species. As predators are documented using roads and linear features to travel faster and farther compared to in forested areas, the presence of these features on the landscape can increase the predation pressure on caribou.
In 2023, the CCRRP restored an 8.5 kilometer section of road within the Swannell River Valley, in an area that has been identified as low-elevation core habitat for the Chase Caribou and that Tsay Keh Dene Nation has designated as the Wdzih Yinè' (Caribou Song) Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area (IPCA), protecting this area from further industrial developments. We employed both functional and ecological restoration techniques make the road surface more suitable for vegetation establishment, as well as to create physical barriers to predator line-of-sight and movement along the former road surface. As well, we planted the road with tree and woody shrub seedlings to accelerate the recovery of the road to a forested ecosystem.
Additionally, we completed pre-treatment monitoring of the wildlife and vegetation using the road in order to understand how wildlife use of the road changes and how to track vegetation growth and establishment through time following restoration treatments. Follow up monitoring will be completed in future years.
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wsi_6360_rpt_2023-2024.pdf
(4.9 MB)
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