Wildlife Program

"In Alberta, it’s getting harder and harder to find hunting and fishing experiences that resemble anything like the wilderness our grandfathers enjoyed. We identify what’s left of these areas and work to protect the habitat so our future generations might have the opportunity to experience the wilderness as it used to be." Robert Anderson, ACA

Our Wildlife program aims to retain or improve the diversity and abundance of wildlife populations and their habitat throughout Alberta. Through science-based conservation, we strive to enhance the sustainability of game species and species at risk. To reflect this focus, our program is organized into four main areas: Ungulates, Upland Game Birds, Waterfowl and Species at Risk. A complete list of wildlife projects, associated reports, research and additional materials is available.

We prioritize program objectives at the provincial scale through strategic and operational planning; ongoing discussions with ASRD and other external experts help us gain insight and have proven to be a successful element of our planning processes. What begins as a question about wildlife populations often leads us toward the applied management and conservation of a species.

Since our inception in 1997, we’ve made notable progress with conservation projects as part of the Wildlife program. Here are a few milestones that help put a few of our projects into perspective:

• 1,290 nest boxes established with 200 refurbished annually,
• 57,000 ducklings fledged from these nest boxes (estimate),
• 290 nest tunnels installed to benefit ground nesting ducks in areas where natural habitat is marginal,
• 1,071 piping plover nests found, 891 exclosed. We’ve walked the equivalent of three quarters of the way around the world searching for plover nests (28,800 km).