Existing caribou habitat and demographic models are poorly suited for Ring of Fire impact assessment: A roadmap for improving the usefulness, transparency, and availability of models for conservation

ABSTRACT

Environmental impact assessments often rely on best available information, which may include models that were not designed for purpose and are not accompanied by an assessment of limitations. We reproduced available models of boreal woodland caribou resource selection and demography and evaluated their suitability for projecting impacts of development in the Ring of Fire (RoF) on boreal caribou in the Missisa range (Ontario, Canada). The specificity of the resource selection model limited usefulness for predicting impacts, and high variability in model coefficients among ranges suggests responses vary with habitat availability. The aspatial demographic model projects decreasing survival and recruitment with increasing disturbance, but high variability among populations implies the importance of these impacts depends on the status of the Missisa population, which is not known. New models that are designed for forecasting the cumulative effects of development and climate change are required to inform RoF decisions. To demonstrate how open-source tools and reproducible workflows can improve the transparency and reusability of models we developed an R package for data preparation, resource selection, and demographic calculations. Open-source tools, reproducible workflows, and reuseable forecasting models can improve our collective ability to inform wildlife management decisions in a timely manner.