Recreation Ecology
Webinar Summary
Recreation ecology is the research field of understanding how recreation impacts flora and fauna. The consensus from hundreds of studies is that even in its gentlest, most benevolent form, recreation is a stressor on ecosystems. For instance, here’s a study about the impact of parks closing during COVID lockdowns on wildlife behaviour. Another shows that chatty hikers have a bigger impact than off-road vehicles.
Watch the webinar
key takeaways:
We need more data on human use patterns, wildlife use patterns and where and when humans and wildlife interact
Focus recreation on areas with less wildlife value
Design recreation infrastructure to reduce interactions
Build and maintain for sight, sound and scent lines
Create features that make noise to alert wildlife of human presence
Educate users about wildlife and how to avoid interactions - signage, social media, etc.
Close recreation access - seasonally, berry or nesting.
Time of day, avoid dusk and dawn
Timely, when wildlife present
Animals move away from humans, and can even be displaced by self propelled recreation. To avoid human-wildlife conflicts, we need to start with understanding wildlife. Here are some key factors to consider:
Intensity of use, including number of people or number of groups
Behaviour of people, including speed, noise
Reaction distance, the distance to human at point disturbed
Species and individual differences and varying tolerances
Habituation, some species/individuals get used to human presence
Seasonal variation, depending on food sources or breeding patterns
Impacts on wildlife:
Movement away from high-quality habitat
Reduced foraging success
Avoidance of prime travel corridors
Reduced Species Survival
To reduce impacts we need more data.
1. Wildlife data:
What species present in given area
What habitat species use the most
Seasonal behaviour and sensitivity
Displacement and reaction distance for each species
Data sources: Remote cameras, scientific research
2. Human data:
Patterns of use
Intensity of use
Data sources:
Traditional: trail counters, human counters, park and camping passes
Modern: Digital tracking using mobile data, Drone and aerial surveys, social media tags, Strava heat maps, geotagged photos
With two data sources we can overlap them
Example: Yellowstone to Yukon and UNBC compared recreational linear features with wildlife habitat models for caribou, wolverine, grizzly to identify hot spots: good habitat with lots of human use.
https://y2y.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Loosen-et-al.-2023.pdf
What to do with info:
1. Develop best practices and management guidelines like Y2Y did for wolverines:
https://jem-online.org/index.php/jem/article/view/631
2. Steer recreation intensity to areas with low wildlife value
3. Use closures, when overlap is restricted to certain time periods. Examples:
Jasper National Park winter closures for caribou
Squamish Chief Provincial Park falcon nesting closures, picture below
Fernie Trails Alliance discourages trail use at dawn and dusk when most likely to interact/disturb wildlife
Timely closures when wildlife is known to be in area
4. Signage
Communicate with users on social media, websites and with physical signs on trail and trail heads
Use seasonal signs to bring attention to seasonal or current situations
Eg. Western toad migration in Cumberland (below social post) and Whistler
5. Sight, sound and scent lines
To reduce grizzly bear conflicts, panelist Michelle McLellan worked with the Nelson Mountain Bike Club on improving trails for wildlife. Reporting on this effort to come.
Project included:
Cutting back brush to open areas up
Routing trails on ridges rather than gullies or lower on the slope
Deliberately making noisy wooden features
Challenges
The data is hard to access and expensive
Takes special skills to process
Availability of wildlife specialists to work with recreation groups
Solution
Recreation groups need to collaborate to make data analysis more accessible. For example, Trans Canada Trail is using anonymized data from Propulso to better understand usage and user behaviour. Here’s an article and webinar about it.
Panellists and contacts
The panelists are happy to answer questions directly:
Farhad Moghimehfar, Vancouver Island University, Farhad.Moghimehfar@viu.ca
Brynn McLellan, Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative, brynn@y2y.net
Michelle McLellan, Wildlife Science Centre, University of British Columbia Okanagan mclellan.wildlife.research@gmail.com
Further reading:
Y2Y recreation ecology page, includes a further list of resources.
https://y2y.net/blog/studying-recreation-in-the-yellowstone-to-yukon-region/ Will be
updated in mid-August this year.
Y2Y social science research project, includes further social science research resources.
Guidelines for winter recreation near wolverine dens
https://jem-online.org/index.php/jem/article/view/631
Hausleitner, D., Kortello, A., Barrueto, M., Harrower, W., & Krebs, J. (2024). Guidelines for winter recreation near wolverine dens in montane Western North America. Journal of Ecosystems & Management, 24. https://doi.org/10.22230/jem.2024v24n1a631
Infographic link:
Trails report detailing documented and undocumented trails.
https://y2y.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Loosen-et-al.-2023.pdf
Loosen, A., Capdevila, T. V., Pigeon, K., Wright, P., & Jacob, A. L. (2023).
Understanding the role of traditional and user-created recreation data in the cumulative footprint of recreation. Journal of outdoor recreation and tourism, 44, 100615. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jort.2023.100615.
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