Cold Lake & East Side Athabasca Woodland Caribou Ranges
MEG CLRP Caribou Restoration
2014 - 2024
Restoring Woodland Caribou Habitat
The MEG CLRP Caribou Restoration program is one of many such initiatives undertaken by energy and forestry companies operating in the Cold Lake and East Side Athabasca Woodland Caribou Ranges.
In conjunction with other regional industry operators, MEG Energy Inc. is working to improve the amount of available habitat to this ‘at risk’ species.
Caribou herd ranges of interest to regional operators.
Since 2014, Reclaimit has worked with one of our clients, to restore caribou habitat within the East Side Athabasca Range (ESAR).
To date, habitat restoration activities have included:
- Restoration of 220 km of legacy seismic line and other linear features
- Creating 10,000 ha of restored habitat in the ESAR.
- Planting 160,000 seedlings
- Contributing innovative practices for linear restoration in a variety of ecosystems
Two animals out of a group of four woodland caribou that wandered onto an active Reclaimit worksite, Saskatchewan, 2015.
Example of target linear feature prior to treatment.
Breaking the frost on a treatment site for afforestation, using Reclaimit’s proven Winter-reforestation solution, February 2016.
As noted in the tracks of a woodland caribou, the 2016 legacy seismic line is still of interest to the resident wildlife. Improvement is needed, February 2023.
By rapidly returning to monitor the effectiveness of treatments, swift action to address ineffective applications assures that improvements can keep pace with the program’s advancement. Then the lines, given a period of dormancy from animal and human traffic, become indistinguishable from the adjacent forest. Those planted and naturally established forest plants are free to take over, and resident wildlife are passively directed back to their historic travel paths.
Responding to the 2023 finding, improvements were implemented. Now proving successful, the adjusted methodology is applied in various forms – ecologically aligned – and is effectively deterring woodland caribou from the casual use of linear features.
