Presently we are engaging with communities and developing a proposal to study and assess risks to wildlife in northern Saskatchewan and to identify practical short- and long-term solutions to mitigate these risks. This includes strategies to stop the transmission of chronic wasting disease (CWD) into Canada’s caribou herds, and balancing healthy moose populations with that of CWD-free caribou. Projects include habitat selection and mortality risk of moose, space-use overlap with white-tailed deer and the potential for diseases such as meningeal worm and CWD to spread between species, and multi-species survey methods using high resolution aerial imagery and AI-assisted animal identification. This will be a major program of regional, provincial, and national significance that bridges Traditional Ecological and Local Knowledge with novel approaches based on western science.
