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CD Long / The Wolverine Foundation
Wolverine have been recovering
in Ontario and have recently been
sighted in the study area.
3.4.2.1 Habitat availability
For each cover type (including footprints),
habitat availability is assessed as the product
of its proportional abundance and its
habitat value. Habitat value is a parameter
that expresses the utility of a cover type to
the species, where 0 indicates no utility and
1 indicates capacity to support the species’
maximum density. All natural land cover
types were assigned a value of 1, given
that wolverines are habitat generalists in
fire-driven landscapes (Justina Ray, pers.
comm.). Research in northwestern Ontario
found wolverine avoid deciduous forest relative to coniferous forest,
but it is thought that the avoidance was due to another underlying
biotic or abiotic variable (Bowman et al. 2010). Footprints were
assigned a value of 0 because wolverine prefer intact habitat.
To account for avoidance and mortality, the habitat value of land
cover in proximity of anthropogenic footprints was reduced by
applying buffers to footprint and down-weighting the value of
habitat within the buffer by a proportional use coefficient (i.e., the
proportion of habitat within the buffer that is used). Buffer widths
and use were based on an HSI model constructed for wolverine in
Alberta (Jokinen 2004), which includes buffer relationships for four
footprint types.
• All weather roads (applied here to major and minor roads): habitat
suitability was reduced by an average of 65% within 1,000
m of the footprint.
• Good weather roads (applied here to winter roads): habitat suitability
was reduced by an average of 50% within 600 m of the
footprint.
• Vegetated linear disturbances (applied here to transmission lines
and railroad): habitat suitability was reduced by an average of
35% within 400 m of the footprint.
• Polygonal footprints (applied here to all other footprint types,
except reservoirs): habitat suitability was reduced by 70% within
700 m of the footprint.
3.4.2.2 Habitat quality
Habitat quality is a value ranging from 0 to 1 that incorporates
the effect of one or more landscape attributes on habitat such as
road density, forest age, and human population density. For each
28 Canadian Boreal Initiative | Wildlife Conservation Society Canada