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• For more information on the Scaup Breeding Ecology, e-mail Stuart Slattery
• For more information on the HEAD Project, e-mail Eric Butterworth

 

Scaup and White-winged Scoters in the Northwest Territories

The Issue

Since the late 1970’s, continental breeding season populations of scaup (both species combined) and scoters (all three species combined) have declined by over 40%. These birds breed primarily in the boreal forest and their steepest declines, approaching or exceeding 60%, occurred in the NWT. Most of their populations breed in the NWT, and so these regional patterns have continental impacts.

Reasons for population declines are largely unknown, in part because we lack basic information about the ecology of scaup and scoters, including vital rates during the breeding season from core breeding areas. This knowledge gap hinders our ability to build population models to help identify limiting factors or predict which vital rates might be most sensitive to management.

Objectives

The primary objective of this study is to collect basic information on the breeding ecology of these ducks to help us begin understanding what might be causing their declines. Specifically, we are examining:

1. Number of eggs laid, nests hatched and ducklings surviving until late in the rearing period.
2. Habitat use during nesting and raising young
3. Food availability

Status

This project uses a combination of radio tracking, nest searching, and brood observations to obtain vital rates. To date, we have captured120 scoters (41 females and 79 males) and 32 female scaup, and found 152 scaup nests. We anticipate 3 more years of this study.

Hydrology Ecology And Disturbance (HEAD) Project

Dr. Kevin Devito, an assistant professor of environmental biology and ecology at the University of Alberta, will lead a four-scientist research team of fellow U of A professors Suzanne Bayley, biological sciences, and Lee Foote, renewable resources, as well as University of Western Ontario plant sciences/geography professor Irena Creed, into the abundant wetlands of Utikuma Lake, an eight million acre swath of boreal forest in north central Alberta, to determine the hydrology, ecology and disturbances (HEAD) affecting the region. Read More ... (PDF)