eDNA Program
Need for the program
One of the biggest obstacles to conservation in Northern Canada is capacity limitations in an extremely large area of study. This means that we have limited baseline information on species occurrences. In the Northwest Territories, less than 40,000 people live in a territory spanning 1.346 million km^2. Climate change, rising temperatures and loss of permafrost are having a significant impact on northern communities, peoples, biodiversity and habitats.
Conservation of northern species, especially those that are culturally important to Indigenous people, is critical. Métis of the Great Slave Lake region have inhabited the lands and waters of their traditional territories for generations, and continue to use and inhabit them to this day. NSMA members can contribute heavily to documenting areas of importance to species diversity, historical presence of these species, as well as the habitats that are critical to local species.
Research questions and objectives
Our overarching objective was to use a combination of western science and Traditional Knowledge to identify as many targeted species as possible at roughly one dozen sampling locations in the North Slave Region of the NWT.
Targeted species are defined here as culturally important species and species at risk, notably Boreal Caribou, Wood Bison, Wolverine, Northern Leopard Frog, Western Toad and Little Brown Myotis.
We used a combination of eDNA analysis and environmental sensors (game cameras and autonomous recording units) to create species baselines for each location to inform potential future conservation actions. We placed a special emphasis on creating an enhanced species baseline for Old Fort Rae which is located within the boundaries of the proposed Dınàgà Wek'èhodì protected area
Results
Over the past five years this program has enabled NSMA to build our internal capacity to monitor wildlife across the North Slave Region. Through eDNA analysis we have confirmed the presence of 44 different species of mammals, birds and amphibians across 13 locations of which, four are species at risk (Caribou, Wolverine, Wood Bison and Horned Grebe).
Game cameras have enabled us to confirm the presence of several other species that were not picked up through eDNA sampling such as Gray Wolf and Canadian Lynx. ARUs picked up 54 different species of birds on the NWT species at risk list, including Lesser Yellowlegs, Evening Grosbeak and Olive-sided Fly Catcher. In the future we hope to conduct temporal analysis to be able to track changes in species detections over time.
