Boreal Caribou and Wood Bison Population Monitoring

Clients: Environment and Climate Change Canada, Province of Alberta

Reliable estimates of survival and recruitment are essential for managing species at risk, yet the analytical methods have historically been inconsistent across jurisdictions. Poisson Consulting developed two peer-reviewed R package suites to address this gap.

bbousuite (Dalgarno et al., 2025, Journal of Open Source Software) provides a standardized Bayesian workflow for estimating boreal caribou adult female survival and calf recruitment from hunter-based monitoring data. The suite handles common data-quality challenges, including small sample sizes, missing observations, and variable survey effort, and produces the estimates required for federal recovery planning.

bisonpicsuite (Hill, Choquette & Kortello, 2025, Journal of Open Source Software) applies similar principles to estimate wood bison population parameters from remote camera data, building on earlier state-space population modelling of the Mackenzie Wood Bison herd in the Northwest Territories.

Together, these tools demonstrate how purpose-built, open-source software can improve the consistency and transparency of wildlife monitoring across agencies and jurisdictions.