Abstract
While there is no denying that oil sands development in the Athabasca Oil Sands Region (AOSR) has large impacts upon the habitat it disturbs, developers are legally required to return this land to “an equivalent land capability.” While still early in the process of reclamation, land undergoing reclamation offers an opportunity to study factors influencing reclamation success, as well as how reclaimed ecosystems function. As such, an Early Successional Wildlife Dynamics (ESWD) program was created to study how wildlife return to and use reclaimed upland boreal habitat in the AOSR. Wildlife data comprising 182 taxa of mammals, birds, and amphibians, collected between 2011 and 2017 and from five oil sands leases, were compared from multiple habitat types (burned [BRN], cleared [CLR], compensation lakes [COMP], logged [LOG], mature forest [MF], and reclaimed sites [REC]). Overall, similarity of wildlife communities in REC and MF plots varied greatly, even at 33 years since reclamation (31–62% with an average of 52%). However, an average community similarity of 52% so early in the successional process suggests that current reclamation efforts are progressing towards increased similarity compared to mature forest plots. Conversely, our data suggest that REC plots are recovering differently than plots impacted by natural (BRN) or other anthropogenic disturbances (LOG), which is likely due to differences associated with soil reconstruction and development on reclaimed plots. Regardless of the developmental trajectory of reclaimed habitats, progression towards increased wildlife community similarity at REC and MF plots is apparent in our data. While there is no expectation that reclaimed upland habitats will resemble or function identically to naturally occurring boreal forest, the degree of similarity observed in our study suggests that comparable ecological functionality is possible, increasing the probability that oil sands operators will be able to fulfill their regulatory requirements and duty to reclaim regarding wildlife and wildlife habitat.
Highlights
Located in the northeastern portion of the Canadian province of Alberta, the Athabasca Oil Sands Region (AOSR) has received national and international attention regarding the environmental costs of large-scale resource extraction [1, 2]
While there is no denying that oil sands developments have large impacts upon the landscape of the AOSR, developers are legally required to return disturbed land to “an equivalent land capability” [1, 4]
An average community similarity of 52% after 33 years is promising from a reclamation success perspective, as 33 years is early in the boreal successional process
Summary
Located in the northeastern portion of the Canadian province of Alberta, the Athabasca Oil Sands Region (AOSR) has received national and international attention regarding the environmental costs of large-scale resource extraction [1, 2]. The primary agent of disturbance is habitat loss and isolation [6], leading to area and edge effects that can impact biodiversity [7] and alter the abundance and composition of flora and fauna near disturbed sites [8,9,10,11]. These impacts will have variable effects on wildlife species: some will adapt to a more fragmented environment while others will not and may become at risk of extirpation within the project area. Oil sands developers are legally required to return disturbed land to “an equivalent land capability [1, 4],” defined as the ability of the land to support similar, but not necessarily identical land uses that existed prior to disturbance [3, 12]
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