Mathieu Leblond

Environment and Climate Change Canada · Science & Technology Branch

Avoidance of roads has been demonstrated for many animal species, but little is known about the relationship between anthropogenic disturbance levels and the degree of avoidance by animals. We investigated the hypothesis that the strength of road‐avoidance behaviour increases with the intensity of the disturbance for a large, disturbance‐sensitive...

Efforts in isolating the relative effects of resources and disturbances on animal-distribution patterns remain hindered by the difficulty of accounting for multiple scales of resource selection by animals with seasonally dynamic drivers. We developed multi-scale, seasonal models to explore how local resource selection by the threatened forest-dwell...

Anthropogenic disturbances have been demonstrated to affect animal behavior, distribution, and abundance, but assessment of their impacts on fitness-related traits has received little attention. We hypothesized that human activities and infrastructure cause a decrease in the individual performance of preys because of anthropogenically enhanced pred...

Understanding animal movements across heterogeneous landscapes is of great interest because it helps explain the dynamic processes influencing the distribution of individuals in space. Research on how animals move relative to short-range environmental characteristics are scarce. Our objective was to determine the variables influencing movement of a...

The 2023 wildfire season in Québec set records due to extreme warm and dry conditions, burning 4.5 million hectares and indicating persistent and escalating impacts associated with climate change. This study reviews the unusual weather conditions that led to the fires, discussing their extensive impacts on the forest sector, fire management, boreal...

The 2023 wildfire season in Québec set records due to extreme warm and dry conditions, burning 4.5 million hectares and indicating persistent and escalating impacts associated with climate change. The study reviews the unusual weather conditions that led to the fires, discussing their extensive impacts on the forest sector, fire management, boreal...

In boreal forests of North America, land managers often carry out preventive treatments of forest fuel for the protection of human infrastructure from wildfires. However, these treatments may negatively affect other ecosystem services, such as the capacity to sustain wildlife populations. Here, we examine the efficacy of a strategy aimed at preserv...

Regional analyses assessing the vulnerabilities of forest ecosystems and the forest sector to climate change are key to considering the heterogeneity of climate change impacts as well as the fact that risks, opportunities, and adaptation capacities might differ regionally. Here we provide the Regional Integrated Assessment of climate change on Queb...

Conservation approaches that efficiently protect multiple values, such as the umbrella species concept, have been widely promoted with expected dramatic ecosystem changes. Due to its social and cultural importance, and recent declining trends, boreal populations of woodland caribou have been suggested as potential umbrella species for other declini...

Most research on boreal populations of woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou) has been conducted in areas of high anthropogenic disturbance. However, a large portion of the species' range overlaps relatively pristine areas primarily affected by natural disturbances, such as wildfire. Climate‐driven habitat change is a key concern for the cons...

Warming temperatures and advancing spring are affecting annual snow and ice cycles, as well as plant phenology, across the Arctic and boreal regions. These changes may be linked to observed population declines in wildlife, including barren‐ground caribou (Rangifer tarandus), a key species of Arctic environments. We quantified how barren‐ground cari...

Several caribou (Rangifer tarandus) populations co‐occur with endemic or introduced populations of muskoxen (Ovibos moschatus), which has led to concerns about the potential competition between the species, especially in regions where the growth of muskoxen populations coincides with caribou declines. We evaluated the potential for competition betw...

Abstract Protected areas are needed to conserve nature and biodiversity worldwide. The province of Québec (Canada) recently established a large wilderness area affording significant habitat protection for boreal woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou), a wide‐ranging species at risk. We describe a decision support framework combining ecologica...

Many boreal populations of woodland caribou in Canada are declining, mainly due to the prevalence of anthropogenic disturbances which alter predator-prey dynamics. Climate change is expected to exert an additional negative influence on caribou populations in coming decades, but it is unclear whether or how human activities and climate change will i...

Anthropogenic disturbances are increasing worldwide, causing wildlife habitat loss, alteration, and fragmentation. In Canada, the decommissioning of linear anthropogenic structures is identified as a promising tool to restore the habitat of threatened populations of boreal caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou) by reducing food availability for altern...

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 developm...

Distributions of landbirds in Canadian northern forests are expected to be affected by climate change, but it remains unclear which pathways are responsible for projected climate effects. Determining whether climate change acts indirectly through changing fire regimes and/or vegetation dynamics, or directly through changes in climatic suitability m...

Animal migrations occur in many taxa and are considered an adaptive response to spatial or temporal variations in resources. Human activities can influence the cost-benefit trade-offs of animal migrations, but evaluating the determinants of migration trajectory and movement rate in declining populations facing relatively low levels of human disturb...

To provide essential knowledge for the development of woodland caribou recovery plans, the Canadian Forest Service initiated an integrative research project in collaboration with the Pessamit Innu community (QC North Shore). The first objective is to mobilize science and indigenous knowledge and perspectives to inform the North Shore caribou recove...

Linear features are increasing worldwide and, in many jurisdictions, their decommissioning has been identified as a way to restore wildlife habitat. Few studies have assessed restoration practices on forest roads, yet they are the main linear disturbance throughout most circumboreal forests. In boreal forests of eastern Canada, such knowledge would...

Boreal forests provide numerous ecological services, including the ability to store large amounts of carbon, and are of significance to global biodiversity. Increases in industrial activities in boreal landscapes since the mid‐20th century have added to concerns over biodiversity loss and climate change. Boreal forests are home to dwindling populat...

Raptors are important environmental indicators because they are apex predators and can be sensitive to disturbance. Few studies have addressed habitat preferences of tundra-nesting raptors, and those that exist have focused on fine-scale characteristics. With increasing economic development predicted to occur throughout the Canadian Arctic, the inv...

Habitat selection has received considerable attention from ecologists during the last decades, yet the underlying forces shaping individual differences in habitat selection are poorly documented. Some of these differences could be explained by the early experience of individuals in their natal habitat. By selecting habitat attributes like those enc...

Studies of ecosystem responses to climate change often focus on potential equilibria in species or community distributions, overlooking the transitions to new equilibrium states. Transient phases can however last for decades or centuries, during which both demography and interspecific interactions are expected to play a crucial role. Here, we inves...

To better understand the potential costs and benefits of prolonged parental care in gregarious species, we studied post-weaning associations in a marked population of mountain goats (Oreamnos americanus) monitored for 22 years. We calculated the occurrence and frequency of associations involving 1- and 2-year-old juveniles. We investigated (1) the...

Simulated wolf howling sessions are a popular ecotourism activity, but no exhaustive evaluation has been made on their potential impacts on wolf ecology. We evaluated the effects of simulated wolf howling sessions on the space use of gray wolves (Canis lupus L., 1758) in the Montmorency Forest (Quebec, Canada). Although we equipped 22 individuals w...

Background Freshwater lakes and rivers of the Northern Hemisphere have been freezing increasingly later and thawing increasingly earlier during the last century. With reduced temporal periods during which ice conditions are favourable for locomotion, freshwater bodies could become impediments to the inter-patch movements, dispersion, or migration o...

Prey may trade off resource acquisition with mortality risk by using various habitat selection strategies. Empirical assessments have shown that the functional and numerical responses of predators to human disturbances are variable, yet spatial changes in predation risk by two predators have seldom been studied for prey occurring in human‐modified...

Le gouvernement du Québec a adopté des orientations stratégiques qui permettront d’augmenter la superficie en aires protégées pour atteindre environ 12 % du territoire québécois d’ici 2015 (Gouvernement du Québec, 2011). Dans le cadre de ces mêmes orientations, le gouvernement s’est également engagé à protéger un grand territoire dédié à la conserv...

Ecologists writing research articles frequently cite their own papers. Self-citations are frequent in science, but the reasons behind abnormally high rates of self-citations are questionable. My goals were to assess the prevalence of author self-citations and to identify the combination of attributes that best predict high levels of self-citations...

Nous avons évalué les réactions du caribou forestier ( Rangifer tarandus caribou ) face à une route majeure avant, pendant et après son élargissement. Nous avons suivi 53 individus par télémétrie GPS de 2004 à 2010, et avons étudié leurs déplacements et leur distribution par rapport à la route 175, en réfection depuis 2006. Nous avons comparé le ta...

Le caribou (Rangifer tarandus) est une espèce particulièrement sensible aux perturbations anthropiques. En utilisant un cadre conceptuel basé sur les différentes échelles biologiques de réponse à une perturbation, nous présentons une revue des connaissances actuelles sur les impacts des routes, chemins et sentiers sur plusieurs facettes de l'écolog...

Un programme de suivi a long terme permet d’evaluer l’efficacite des mesures d’attenuation installees sur l’autoroute Transcanadienne qui traverse le parc national de Banff, en Alberta, Canada. Depuis 1996, les passages fauniques concus pour la grande faune ont ete traverses plus de 218 000 fois. Les cerfs ont effectue 62 % des traversees contre 19...

ABSTRACT  Wildlife-vehicle collisions cause numerous human fatalities and injuries, and generate considerable expenses in property damage each year. Certain characteristics of the road and its surroundings are known to have an impact on collision probability. Roadside salt pools increase the risk of collision by attracting moose (Alces alces) to th...

We tested the effectiveness of electric fences to reduce moose (Alces alces)-vehicle collisions in 2 fenced sectors (5 km and 10 km) using weekly track surveys and Global Positioning System telemetry. Number of moose tracks along highways decreased by approximately 80% following fence installation. Only 30% (16/53) of moose tracks observed on the r...