Migration is thought to have evolved to promote fitness in the face of spatiotemporal variation in resources (Fryxell and Sinclair 1988). Large vertebrate herbivores, such as ungulates, often alter their broad-scale movement patterns to track seasonal variability in high quality forage (Fryxell et al.1988). Recent evidence indicates migratory behaviour in large ungulates is being lost globally due to landscape changes, such as agriculture and industrial forest disturbances that alter forage access (Lyon and Jensen 1980; Medcraft and Clark 1986; Berger 2004; Harris et al. 2009). There has been a growing concern for the loss of elk migratory behavior in the East Kootenay Trench, an area approximately 10,000km2 within the East Kootenay Region of British Columbia. Elk within this region historically exhibited an altitudinal migration following the summer green-up to higher elevations. Throughout the 2000s there was a notable decrease in migration and increase in resident elk using low elevation range within the East Kootenay Trench, which has resulted in increasing year-round residency on low elevation human dominated landscapes (Szkorupa and Mowat 2010). In the same time period of elk migratory decline, there has been the recovery of wolves and shifts in land use, including increasing clear-cuts (Picture 1) and expanding road networks and town extents. Major issues associated with this increased elk residency include crop depredation. East Kootenay farmers have suffered increased crop loss due to elk. In order to mitigate this issue farmers have erected exclusion fencing (Picture 2), which eliminates elk from their fields, but increases pressure on non-fenced areas and impedes elk movement (Wilson and Morley 2005). |
Picture 1. 2017 photo of a cutblock at White Swan Lake, high elevation (~1,800m) range.
Picture 2. Example of a high fence erected to exclude elk from a crop.
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