Karine PigeonBC government - www.karinepigeon.ca · Ministry of Lands Water and Resource Stewardship - Ecosystems
Karine Pigeon
PhD
About
51
Publications
13,160
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Citations
Introduction
My primary interests lie in wildlife conservation and human-wildlife coexistence. Specifically, I'm interested in understanding how environmental factors influence wildlife behaviour and how this knowledge can help us coexist with wildlife. I value engagement from all sectors, including local communities, to improve knowledge and use creative approaches towards successful coexistence with wildlife. I am now particularly interested in non-invasive and multi-species approaches to answer complex questions.
Additional affiliations
November 2013 - present
Position
- Biologist
Description
- Use of linear features by caribou, their predators, and humans. Food resources in response to mountain pine beetle. Staff training. Aerial surveys, avalanche hazards assessments. Assistance with necropsy and mortality surveys.
January 2008 - April 2015
Laval University / Foothills Research Institute
Position
- PhD Student
Description
- Plasticité comportementale de l’ours grizzli (Ursus arctos) dans un contexte de changements climatiques | Behavioural plasticity of grizzly bears (Ursus arctos) in the context of climage change.
Publications
Publications (51)
Outdoor recreation has experienced a boom in recent years and continues to grow. While outdoor recreation provides wide-ranging benefits to human well-being, there are growing concerns about the sustainability of recreation with the increased pressures placed on ecological systems and visitor experiences. These concerns emphasize the need for manag...
Outdoor recreation has experienced a boom in recent years. While outdoor recreation provides wide-ranging benefits to human well-being and is an important feature of many protected and non-protected areas, there are growing concerns about the sustainability of recreation with the increased pressures placed on ecological systems and visitor experien...
Linear features are pervasive across the boreal forest of Canada, negatively impacting several wildlife species. Understanding how wildlife responds to different types and characteristics of linear features is necessary for coordinated landscape restoration. Currently, linear feature restoration is focused on recovering threatened woodland caribou...
Habitat restoration is a necessary component of wildlife conservation in anthropogenic landscapes. To ensure restoration initiatives achieve the desired effects on wildlife communities, it is useful to investigate how animals use landscape features. Understanding the relationships between wildlife use and ecological cues provides specific and measu...
In Alberta, Canada, mountain pine beetle (MPB) infestations overlap with threatened caribou and grizzly bear ranges. While MPB is a natural part of the ecosystem, increased intensity of infestation due to fire suppression and a changing climate has required mitigating actions in the form of MPB control treatments, including accelerated forest harve...
At the most basic level, the assessment of a species’ status involves knowing where it
occurs. Determining the presence of rare species is difficult, and can be further confounded by the presence of a more common look-alike species. We investigated one of the few places in the world where three species of bears have been reported to co-occur at a f...
Designing a population monitoring program for Asian bears presents challenges associated with their low densities and detectability, generally large home ranges, and logistical or resource constraints. The use of an occupancy-based method to monitor bear populations can be appropriate under certain conditions given the mechanistic relationship betw...
Efficient and effective monitoring methods are required to assess population status and gauge efficacy of conservation actions for threatened species. Here we review the spectrum of field methods useful for monitoring distribution, occupancy, abundance, and population trend for the five species of Asian terrestrial bears. Methods reviewed include e...
Many wildlife species are threatened in Asia, including the five species of terrestrial bears (Asiatic black, Ursus thibetanus; brown, U. arctos; sloth, Melursus ursinus; sun, Helarctos malayanus; giant panda, Ailuropoda melanoleuca): many populations of these bears are thought to be declining or imperiled by small population size. Here our aim is...
Changes in the distribution of a species can be used to as a metric of conservation status and to identify the loss or gain of isolated populations. This mapping process is a primary tool of the IUCN SSC Red List assessment. Most distribution maps are based on expert opinion or species distribution models based on a combination of species detection...
Context
Anthropogenic disturbance alters animal movements. Large mammals require vast areas to meet their needs, and they encounter anthropogenic disturbances frequently during daily movements.
Objectives
We assessed the impact of disturbance on the daily movement of two large threatened mammals, and examined the nuances of movement response to ty...
In western Canada, anthropogenic disturbances resulting from resource extraction activities are associated with habitat loss and altered predator–prey dynamics. These habitat changes are linked to increased predation risk and unsustainable mortality rates for caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou). To inform effective habitat restoration, our goal was...
Scientific evidence is fundamental for guiding effective conservation action to curb biodiversity loss. Yet, research resources in conservation are often wasted due to biased allocation of research effort, irrelevant or low‐priority questions, flawed studies, inaccessible research outputs, and biased or poor‐quality reporting. We outline a striking...
Bears have fascinated people since ancient times. The relationship between bears and humans dates back thousands of years, during which time we have also competed with bears for shelter and food. In modern times, bears have come under pressure through encroachment on their habitats, climate change, and illegal trade in their body parts, including t...
Bears have fascinated people since ancient times. The relationship between bears and humans dates back thousands of years, during which time we have also competed with bears for shelter and food. In modern times, bears have come under pressure through encroachment on their habitats, climate change, and illegal trade in their body parts, including t...
Bears have fascinated people since ancient times. The relationship between bears and humans dates back thousands of years, during which time we have also competed with bears for shelter and food. In modern times, bears have come under pressure through encroachment on their habitats, climate change, and illegal trade in their body parts, including t...
Anthropogenic linear features facilitate access and travel efficiency for predators, and can influence predator distribution and encounter rates with prey. We used GPS collar data from eight wolf packs and characteristics of seismic lines to investigate whether ease-of-travel or access to areas presumed to be preferred by prey best explained season...
The construction of pipeline rights-of-way (ROWs, hereafter ‘pipeline’) involves mechanical site clearing, which impacts soil and ground cover vegetation and has implications for forage availability and predation risk for threatened wildlife, including woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus) and grizzly bear (Ursus arctos). However, there has been no...
Mountain pine beetle (MPB) has become an invasive forest pest of mature pine in western North America as it spreads beyond its former endemic range. Management actions such as timber harvest can reduce the spread of MPB but may affect species of conservation concern like woodland caribou. Our goal was to inform MPB management within caribou ranges...
The distribution of Asiatic black bears (hereafter ABB; Ursus thibetanus), sun bears
(Helarctos malayanus) and sloth bears (Melursus ursinus) intersect in northeast (NE) India (Choudhury 2011, 2013). All 3 species were once recorded in Meghalaya, Assam, and Nagaland. Previously, we conducted workshops in these 3 states (Sharp et al. 2017), and dev...
Linear disturbances impact ecosystems and species worldwide. These impacts are perhaps most profound in forest ecosystems like the Canadian boreal forest which has been fragmented by an extensive network of seismic lines which affect a number of boreal species. Of particular concern are the impacts of seismic lines on boreal and mountain woodland c...
Natural regeneration of seismic lines, cleared for hydrocarbon exploration, is slow and often hindered by vegetation damage, soil compaction, and motorized human activity. There is an extensive network of seismic lines in western Canada which is known to impact forest ecosystems, and seismic lines have been linked to declines in woodland caribou (R...
Across the boreal forest of Canada, habitat disturbance is the ultimate cause of caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou) declines. Habitat restoration is a focus of caribou recovery efforts, with a goal to finding ways to reduce predator use of disturbances, and caribou-predator encounters. One of the most pervasive disturbances within caribou ranges i...
Quasi-likelihood under the independence model criterion for candidate models used to identify factors determining broad scale movement behaviour of wolves and grizzly bears in west-central Alberta, Canada, between 2003 and 2009.
(DOCX)
Akaike under the independence model criterion for candidate models determining fine scale movement rates of wolves and grizzly bears in west-central Alberta, Canada, between 2003 and 2009.
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Population-level coefficient estimates and 95% confidence intervals for the best models explaining broad scale movement behaviour of wolves and grizzly bears in west-central Alberta, Canada, between 2003 and 2009.
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Description of LiDAR processing used to attribute vegetation height to legacy seismic lines within the ranges of the Little Smoky, A La Peche, Redrock Prairie Creek and Narraway caribou herds in west-central Alberta, Canada.
(DOCX)
Number of individual wolves and grizzly bears (N), steps, clusters, and steps within 100 m of seismic lines used to explain broad scale movement behaviour (Step Selection Functions; SSF) and fine scale movement rates in west-central Alberta, Canada, between 2003 and 2009.
Wolf clusters were successive steps taken < 5 days of one another while grizz...
Histogram showing mean vegetation height (m) along 100 m segments of seismic lines in west-central Alberta, Canada, measured using LiDAR.
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Variables used to explain broad scale movement behaviour (Step Selection Functions; SSF) and fine scale movement rates of wolves and grizzly bears in west-central Alberta, Canada, between 2003 and 2009.
(DOCX)
Graphical abstract to accompany Finnegan et al. Natural regeneration on seismic lines influences movement behaviour of wolves and grizzly bears.
(TIFF)
Seismic lines are one of the most pervasive disturbances across the boreal forest of western Canada, with densities in Alberta as high as 10 km/km². The effect of seismic lines and associated habitat fragmentation on boreal wildlife is generally well understood, and most recently seismic lines have been focus of habitat restoration efforts to conse...
In their critique of our recent article in Oecologia (Pigeon et al. Oecologia 181:1101-1116, 2016a) investigating the influence of ambient temperature on brown bear habitat selection, Ordiz et al. (2017, current issue) argue that we downplay the role of human disturbance on bear behavior, and that we wrongly report on the findings of Ordiz et al. (...
Populations of boreal and southern mountain caribou in Alberta, Canada, are declining, and the ultimate cause of their decline is believed to be anthropogenic disturbance. Linear features are pervasive across the landscape, and of particular importance, seismic lines established in the 1900s (legacy seismic lines) are slow to regenerate. Off-highwa...
Climate-induced changes in the phenology of hibernation for bear species could result in altered energy budgets, reduced cub survival and fitness and increased human-bear conflicts. Using 11 years of data, we determined the amount of variation in den entry and den exit dates that could be attributed to sex and reproductive status, weather and berry...
Background
Most biological functions are synchronized to the environmental light:dark cycle via a circadian timekeeping system. Bears exhibit shallow torpor combined with metabolic suppression during winter dormancy. We sought to confirm that free-running circadian rhythms of body temperature (Tb) and activity were expressed in torpid grizzly (brow...
To fulfill their needs, animals are constantly making trade-offs among limiting factors. Although there is growing evidence about the impact of ambient temperature on habitat selection in mammals, the role of environmental conditions and thermoregulation on apex predators is poorly understood. Our objective was to investigate the influence of ambie...
Anthropogenic landscape change (i.e., disturbance) is recognized as an important factor in the decline and extirpation of wildlife populations. Understanding and monitoring the relationship between wildlife distribution and disturbance is necessary for effective conservation planning. Many studies consider disturbance as a covariate explaining wild...
Throughout their range, the decline of woodland caribou populations is thought to be a result of habitat degradation and fragmentation from industrial activities. Land managers are under pressure to restore habitat within caribou ranges and mitigate potential negative effects of resource extraction on caribou into the future. Considering the histor...
Throughout their range, the decline of woodland caribou populations is thought to be a result of habitat degradation and fragmentation from industrial activities. Land managers are under pressure to restore habitat within caribou ranges and mitigate potential negative effects of resource extraction on caribou into the future. Considering the histor...
Hibernation has evolved as an adaptive strategy to avoid harsh environmental conditions associated with a lack of resources, and the choice of hibernacula can affect the fitness of individuals. Most habitat selection studies, including investigations of overwintering sites, are based on data collected from land inventories or remote sensing databas...
The study of behavioural plasticity aims at understanding the physiological and behavioural responses of individuals to limiting factors. Climate change has the potential to influence the life history of individuals by altering environmental conditions. Thus, studying the mechanistic links between animal behaviour and environmental conditions is ne...
Hibernation is an adaptive strategy to avoid harsh environmental conditions and seasonal limitations in food and
water. Unlike most hibernators, grizzly bears (Ursus arctos) are aroused easily while in dens and disturbances
while denning can result in fitness costs if bears become active during this period. Our objectives were to
determine den sele...
Considerable spatial variability in snow properties exists within apparently uniform Slopes, Often resulting front microscale weather patterns determined by local terrain. Since it is costly to establish abundant weather stations in a region. local lapse rates may offer an alternative for predicting snowpack characteristics. For two Castle Mountain...
It is hypothesized that active tributaries that push into their trunk glaciers can obstruct the trunk outflow, which can potentially affect the ice flow dynamics and mass balance of the entire glacier system. However, research into this type of tributary-trunk interaction is scarce. This research was primarily designed to quantify the effects of Sh...