The Gray Wolves (Canis lupus) of British Columbia’s Coastal Rainforests

The mainland coast of British Columbia (BC) is a remote area that is comparatively free from human-caused disturbance. However, concerns about current and anticipated increases in industrial forestry activity have prompted conservation biologists to investigate the biota in this understudied region. We were commissioned by the Raincoast Conservation Society to study coastal wolves so that information could be incorporated into ongoing conservation planning and education efforts. The summer of 2000 marked the pilot season of a multi-year research project. Our team spent more than 240 person days in the field during the summer and fall seasons. We surveyed 18 mainland watersheds and 21 islands in an area greater than 29,000-km2 (land and sea). We examined scats to describe wolf diet, collected genetic material, and noted other natural history observations. We also conducted an extensive review of scientific literature and made estimates of population size and human-caused mortality

Reasoning About a Simulated Printer Case Investigation with Forensic Lucid

In this work we model the ACME (a fictitious company name) "printer case incident" and make its specification in Forensic Lucid, a Lucid- and intensional-logic-based programming language for cyberforensic analysis and event reconstruction specification. The printer case involves a dispute between two parties that was previously solved using the finite-state automata (FSA) approach, and is now re-done in a more usable way in Forensic Lucid. Our simulation is based on the said case modeling by encoding concepts like evidence and the related witness accounts as an evidential statement context in a Forensic Lucid program, which is an input to the transition function that models the possible deductions in the case. We then invoke the transition function (actually its reverse) with the evidential statement context to see if the evidence we encoded agrees with one's claims and then attempt to reconstruct the sequence of events that may explain the claim or disprove it.Comment: 18 pages, 3 figures, 7 listings, TOC, index; this article closely relates to arXiv:0906.0049 and arXiv:0904.3789 but to remain stand-alone repeats some of the background and introductory content; abstract presented at HSC'09 and the full updated paper at ICDF2C'11. This is an updated/edited version after ICDF2C proceedings with more references and correction

Range Expansion by Moose into Coastal Temperate Rainforests of British Columbia, Canada

Ranges of species are dynamic and respond to long-term climate change and contemporary effects such as habitat modification. We report here that moose (Alces alces) have recently colonized coastal temperate rainforests of British Columbia, Canada. Contrary to recent publications, field observations of moose and their sign, combined with their occurrence in wolf (Canis lupus) faeces, suggest that moose are now widespread on the coastal mainland and occur on least three islands. Traditional ecological knowledge (information accumulated by aboriginal peoples about their environment) suggests that colonization occurred during the mid 1900s, concomitant with logging of major watersheds that bisect the Coast Mountain Range. Range expansion by moose may have ecological consequences such as alteration of predator– prey dynamics and transmission of disease to native deer (Odocoileus hemionus)

Faecal-Centric Approaches to Wildlife Ecology and Conservation; Methods, Data and Ethics

Abundant and commonly encountered in the field, wildlife faeces have long attracted scientists. Recent advances in molecular techniques, however, especially when coupled with creative study designs, can now yield a great variety of high quality data. Herein, we review the opportunities and challenges of faecal-centric approaches to address ecological and conservation questions using wolves of coastal British Columbia, Canada, as a case system. We begin by discussing methodological considerations, which should have broad applicability to any wildlife study system. We then summarize the extensive and unique variety of data that has emerged from our ‘facts from faeces’ approach with wolves, which has ranged from descriptive autecology to process-oriented hypothesis-testing to applied conservation management. We conclude by contrasting this non-invasive approach with radio-collaring in an ethics framework. We contend that when the two methods are equally efficacious in answering required research questions, scatology become the only ethical option, a perspective increasingly codified as policy governing research activities

A Critical Assessment of Protection for Key Wildlife and Salmon Habitats under the Proposed British Columbia Central Coast Land and Resource Management Plan

The Central Coast Land and Resource Management Plan (CCLRMP) table recently declared a consensus1 on proposed protected areas for British Columbia’s Central Coast. This region is recognized for its globally rare and largely intact mainland and island ecosystems and land use decisions should reflect this importance. We evaluated the efficacy of this proposal using a spatial assessment of habitat. We focus on protected areas in the context of the overall CCLRMP. We examined the level of protection provided by the CCLRMP in three key coastal habitats: deer winter range, wolf reproductive habitat, and salmon reproductive and rearing habitat. Assessment of deer winter range was limited to Heiltsuk Territory, which comprises a large proportion of the CCLRMP region