\u201cWe found out from satellite data that the total area of the Mackenzie Bison Sanctuary covered in water was about five per cent in the 1980s,\u201d explains Pisaric. \u201cThis has increased to over 11 per cent of the land area now.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the exact causes of the lake expansion remain uncertain, Pisaric says warmer temperatures bring more precipitation and some permafrost thawing.<\/p>\n
Because the bison sanctuary land is so flat, even slight changes in precipitation and flow causes water bodies to grow. He says some lakes in the area have expanded \u201chundreds of times in size\u201d and are the largest they\u2019ve been in at least 200 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cSurveys of the bison population at the same time indicate that, as the lakes have expanded, the Mackenzie herd appears to have abandoned the former core of its range within the protected area of the sanctuary as habitat becomes inundated,\u201d says Pisaric.<\/p>\n
The wood bison are moving toward a busy highway that connects Edmonton with Yellowknife. The road is often travelled by large trucks going back and forth from the North\u2019s diamond mines.<\/p>\n
\u201cIncidents of collisions have increased,\u201d says Pisaric. \u201cIt\u2019s especially dangerous in the fall, when daylight begins to decrease again and there\u2019s no snow cover yet; drivers don\u2019t see the bison until they\u2019re right on top of them.\u201d<\/p>\n
The wood bison, found in Alberta, Manitoba, British Columbia, Yukon, and southwestern N.W.T, is a subspecies of the American bison listed as \u201cthreatened\u201d under Canada\u2019s Species at Risk Act.<\/p>\n
\u201cDisease, cross-breeding with plains bison and habitat loss through human development, agriculture, forestry and petroleum resource development are the main threats faced by Wood Bison,\u201d says the Species at Risk Public Registry<\/a>.<\/p>\n Pisaric explains that the wood bison living in Mackenzie Bison Sanctuary are \u201cgenetically pure,\u201d taken to the sanctuary from a remote location in Wood Buffalo National Park during the 1960s.<\/p>\n \u201cMost of the wood bison that we have in Canada are a cross between the plains bison and wood bison, so they\u2019re not genetically pure,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/GreatSlaveLake-1050x700.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"