Long-Term Fisheries Stewardship in the Kootenay Basin

Sat, 01 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Clients: BC Hydro, Fish and Wildlife Compensation Program, BC Ministry of Forests, Ktunaxa Nation Council

Since 2008, Poisson Consulting has contributed to many fisheries studies across the Kootenay and Columbia basins in southeastern British Columbia. These studies combine acoustic telemetry, mark-recapture studies (PIT and reward tags), snorkel surveys, and boat electrofishing to estimate population abundance, natural and fishing mortality, growth, and spatial distribution for key species including Bull Trout, Rainbow Trout, Kokanee, Mountain Whitefish, and Walleye.

Using Bayesian hierarchical models, Poisson Consulting provides annual estimates that directly inform fishing regulations and hydro dam operating decisions. The Lower Columbia River Fish Population Indexing program, for example, evaluates multi-species responses to discharge regimes at BC Hydro’s HLK and Brilliant dams, while the Kootenay Lake exploitation study uses acoustic receiver arrays to partition total mortality between harvest and natural causes.

Boreal Caribou and Wood Bison Population Monitoring

Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

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.

Population Monitoring | Poisson Consulting

Long-Term Fisheries Stewardship in the Kootenay Basin

Boreal Caribou and Wood Bison Population Monitoring