NWT RESEARCH DATABASE

Regions: South Slave Region

Tags: wildlife management, bison

Objective(s): To acknowledge stakeholder voices and roles in addressing bison health; to understand stakeholder values, attitudes, and preferences regarding the landscape and bison health management; and, to assess the economic value of bison health management strategies.

Project Description: This licence has been issued for the scientific research application No.4970. This research has three inter-related goals: 1) Acknowledge stakeholder voices and roles in addressing bison health; 2) Understand stakeholder values, attitudes, and preferences regarding the landscape and bison health management; and, 3) Assess the economic value of bison health management strategies. The research team expect to use a sequential four-stage process in the research project. The first stage is an online questionnaire with responses from any interested parties in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and southern Northwest Territories. This initial questionnaire will gauge stakeholder involvement, attitudes, and knowledge of wood bison health issues. The research team plan to advertise the questionnaire on social media and through community organizations. The team are currently seeking research assistants in Fort Smith and Fort Chipewyan to assist members of those communities in completing the questionnaire to ensure their voices and perspectives are included. Stakeholder workshops in Fort Smith and Fort Chipewyan will then allow stakeholders from those communities to cooperatively discuss the bison health issue. The research team are seeking a local professional facilitator that is familiar with these communities. The team expect these discussions to highlight how people think about the landscape and to identify stakeholder-driven bison management strategies. A second online questionnaire will be used to assess the broader community’s acceptance of these bison management strategies. This second questionnaire will focus on how preferable a strategy is based on expected costs, effectiveness, community role, and ecological impact. Preferences for each potential management strategy will inform the economic valuation analyses to be provided to Parks Canada at the conclusion of the project. Prior to submission of the economic value analysis to Parks Canada, the research team will hold additional workshops with stakeholders. This second round of workshops will allow the team to present and discuss the results directly with the participating stakeholders. Stakeholder feedback on the conclusions will then be incorporated into the final report. The research team are endeavouring to build two-way relationships with the communities around the park so that information on the project can be easily shared with all interested parties. Additionally, the workshops will allow the team to connect with and provide updates directly to the stakeholders. A website for the project is under development; the research team will also be using social media to update stakeholders on progress of the project and to answer questions about the project. The team will publish and distribute project summaries through the above mentioned modalities as well as scholarly research articles journals. The fieldwork for this study will be conducted from February 4, 2022 to December 31, 2022.